Grimson’s Penalty Stings Entire Team

Stu Grimson sat at his locker, arms hanging by his sides, looking defenseless. He might as well have been wearing a sign that said “Punch me, please,” and that’s what all those questions must have felt like.

“Was it the turning point, Stu?” “Did you deserve it, Stu?” “Why did you do it, Stu?” “Ever done anything worse, Stu?” “Did you cost your team the game, Stu?”

The big man with the big fists and the short temper was considerably chastened and momentarily humbled. If no one came up and slugged Grimson, all those questions and all the time that Grimson had for second thoughts and second guessing had left his ego as bruised as his wild cross-check left the neck of Detroit’s Kris Draper.

It is, of course, Grimson’s job to be the enforcer, to stick up for his smaller, more fragile teammates, to make sure no liberties are taken, no guff is given to the Mighty Ducks. But it is also Grimson’s job not to lose his head, his mind or control of his anger and that, Grimson said, was exactly what happened Sunday afternoon. With 16 minutes and 55 seconds left in the second period, with the Detroit Red Wings having tied this NHL Western Conference first-round game, 2-2, barely more than a minute earlier, and with his Mighty Ducks having played their hearts out until then trying to prove that, yes, they were men enough to stand up to Detroit.

OK. The Ducks had brought a steamer-sized trunk full of frustration to Game 3 at the Pond. OK. The Ducks had been embarrassed by the wimpy way they had lost two games in Detroit. OK. Grimson wanted to bring some orneriness to the ice.

Which meant that when Grimson thought he saw Draper take a cheap shot at Antti Aalto, Grimson went a little ballistic. Not OK.

Grimson took a well-planned and premeditated whack at Draper’s neck. It was a hard shot, a purposeful blow and Draper slumped immediately to the ice. Grimson found out later that his own teammate, Travis Green, smashed Draper with an elbow before Draper pushed Aalto.

When the penalties were announced, Green was sent off to the penalty box for two minutes and Grimson was sent out of the game with a five-minute match penalty--attempt to injure, it was called.

“Look,” Grimson said after the Ducks lost, 4-2, “if I’d wanted to hurt him, I could have. I weigh 240 pounds, he weighs 190 pounds. If what I’d intended was to really injure him, he would have been injured.

“But I’ll say this. I overreacted to a marginal call and this is not the time of year to retaliate. And, really, the game turned at that specific incident. Our guys had battled and played hard up till then, as well as we’ve played, by far, in the series, and what I did, it made it pretty tough.”

Grimson said he felt a cheap shot had been taken at Aalto. He said he hadn’t seen Green’s penalty elbow thrown. He said the five-minute match penalty was unexpected, “a little marginal,” Grimson said. “I thought I’d get a double minor at most.” He said that his mistake was made “in a split second of anger,” and that as soon as he made his hit, “I knew it was a mistake.”

Then, most poignantly, Grimson put his head down and made a painful admission: That this was absolutely the biggest, most painful, most stupid, most hurtful penalty he had ever taken.

“I wish it hadn’t happened,” Grimson said. “I really do.”

In the Mighty Duck media guide, Grimson says his best NHL moment came in 1995 when he scored a goal for Detroit in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals against Chicago. Sunday’s badly-timed outburst was also a bonus for Detroit. It’s not as if the Red Wings were going to lose this series and probably not this game, but the Ducks can’t afford any mistakes and certainly they cannot afford to give the Red Wings a two-man advantage.

Of course the Red Wings scored. With 39 seconds left on Green’s two-minute penalty, Steve Yzerman gave Detroit a 3-2 lead. The Ducks did kill off the rest of the time but Paul Kariya pointed out that “when you’re a man down for five minutes, two men down for almost two, you’re wasting a lot of valuable energy and that adds up later on.”

None of his teammates would criticize Grimson directly. Yes, it was a turning point, Kariya said. Yes, it made things difficult, Teemu Selanne said. Detroit’s Brendan Shanahan said that Grimson “kind of crossed that line but you can’t blame Stu. That’s his job.”

Not quite. Grimson knows better than that. After the penalty, the Ducks deflated. The fight seemed gone from them and with 22 seconds left in the game, a Detroit fan, and there were a healthy number of red-dressed people at the Pond, threw an octopus onto the ice. That’s a Detroit tradition that had been stamped out by the fun police but security here isn’t so attuned to searching for slimy, dead, tentacled creatures.

The final insult. Kariya skated around the smelly mess as time expired, a lonely man with his head down, staring at nothing. That’s been the sum of these playoffs for the Ducks. Nothing. Blame Sunday’s nothing on Grimson if you must. He’s doing that himself. But deep inside, you bet that many other Ducks would like to do what Stu did Sunday. Whack a Wing from behind.

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com