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Pronger suspended

Ottawa's Dean McAmmond, center, is helped off the ice after a hit from Anaheim's Chris Pronger Saturday. (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Ira Podell Associated Press
Ottawa's Dean McAmmond, center, is helped off the ice after a hit from Anaheim's Chris Pronger Saturday. (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)

OTTAWA – The Anaheim Ducks will have to play without Chris Pronger – again.

Pronger was suspended Sunday for Game 4 of the Stanley Cup finals for his forearm to the head of Dean McAmmond that knocked out the Senators forward and made his status for tonight’s pivotal game questionable.

The loss of Pronger is nothing new to the Ducks. They beat Detroit in Game 4 of the Western Conference finals when Pronger was suspended for a high hit to the head of Red Wings forward Tomas Holmstrom. He also missed 16 games during the regular season, his first in Anaheim, due to injuries, but this discipline pattern has become troublesome to the Norris Trophy finalist.

“It was a reaction play. I stepped up to make the hit and got him with my forearm,” said Pronger, who practiced with the team Sunday. “Obviously you’ve got to suffer the consequences of what’s come down. It was a situation we were in last series, and certainly teammates rallied around me and rallied around one another.

“Certainly we’re looking for that again.”

Pronger leveled McAmmond with his elbow Saturday in the Ducks’ 5-3 loss to the Senators. The Ducks are ahead in the series 2-1 and will get Pronger back upon returning home to Anaheim for Game 5 on Wednesday.

They will either be tied or a win away from the first Stanley Cup title in the Ducks’ 13 NHL seasons. Anaheim is 7-7-3 without him in the lineup.

NHL disciplinarian Colin Campbell announced his decision via conference call at Scotiabank Place, a few hours after meeting with Pronger.

“This one took a lot of thought,” Campbell said. “We had to examine the medical. We had to examine the play, the act. It wasn’t an easy one. But there were some simple aspects to it. A blow to the head with the elbow that resulted in a concussion.”

In Campbell’s nine years on the job following an NHL coaching career, he has suspended three players in the finals.

Pronger is the third to be banished twice in one playoff year and the third to sit out a finals game for an act committed in the championship round. The 6-foot-6, 220-pounder has been suspended seven times, including a one-game ban for leaving the bench for an altercation.

This will be the 14th game Pronger has missed because of suspension: two for elbows to the head, four for high-sticking, another four for slashing, two for cross-checking and one for kicking.

“They did the right thing here,” Pronger said. It’s a situation where there was a head blow, and that’s obviously something that the league’s trying to crack down on. I don’t blame them in any way.”

McAmmond’s status for Game 4 is undetermined.