Rick Carpiniello

rcarpini@lohud.com

NEW YORK – You have to have some sympathy for the guys doing all the bleeding and battling for a Stanley Cup.

Not because of the blood or the battle.

You have to have sympathy because they have no idea what the rules are, night to night, period to period, shift to shift.

Officiating in the NHL has become an epidemic, a major problem, in a sport where everything happens so fast and with so much brutality, by bigger players with weapons and walls.

But today's big, fast, brutal players? They don't have a clue.

New game, new rule book. Embellishment? First round, yes. After, no. Head shots? Bring 'em on. No penalties, no fines, no suspensions. Spears to the groin? No problem. Slew foot (hockey term for a real cheap shot)? Never called, and often perpetrated by the best players — Sidney Crosby, P.K. Subban among them.

Squirt a little water on an opponent after a whistle? Well, if the target's Crosby, that's a $5,000 fine. Probably more if the players union hadn't negotiated a maximum that amounts to couch-cushion change.

That's not why the Rangers lost to the Montreal Canadiens Thursday night. Not at all.

This was Game 3 of the Eastern Conference final, kind of, you know, big stakes.

Right off the hop, ex-Ranger Brandon Prust clobbers Derek Stepan with a high, hard, probably late hit. Stepan crumples. No call. One of the referees happened to be Marc Joannette, who had tripped Stepan on a breakaway in Game 6 of the Pittsburgh series.

This was the exact hit Ottawa's Chris Neil laid on Brian Boyle in the playoffs in 2012, on almost the same spot on the Garden ice, a hit that concussed Boyle and didn't bring any discipline to Neil. The Neil hit, by the way, was bad enough that Prust felt he had to fight Neil later in the series.

"I personally think it's late and I think the main contact is my face," said Stepan. "I never saw it (coming). I moved the puck and even got some strides in before the hit. The main focus is my head. It's a shoulder and there's a lunge there.

"I would certainly hope the league would look at it."

Prust was all fired up because Chris Kreider injured Montreal goalie Carey Price in Game 1. Kreider was tripped on that play. No penalty. The Habs claimed he made no effort to avoid crashing into Price. No penalty. Should have had to be one or the other, but was neither.

So Prust will probably be hearing from the Department of Player Safety and probably won't be suspended because, well, it wasn't an elbow, and because Stepan returned shortly after the hit. And because, well, it's really hard to get suspended.

A little while later, Daniel Carcillo, who has a rap sheet far longer than that of Prust, but has been on pretty good behavior as a Ranger, had Prust lined up. Yet Carcillo made sure to not hit Prust from behind, and didn't. He was called for charging.

Then Derek Dorsett fought Prust in retaliation for Stepan. Carcillo went toward the fight. Linesman Scott Driscoll grabbed Carcillo quite forcefully. Unnecessarily so.

Carcillo tried to get away, unnecessarily forcefully, too, and got himself a game misconduct. Depending on how the officials report the events to league headquarters, maybe a suspension.

"You can't do, obviously, what he did there," Rangers coach Alain Vigneault said. "We'll let the league handle that. We believe that ... if the penalty had been called on Prust, that probably wouldn't have happened."

Cross your fingers that one of these mixed-up calls doesn't decide who wins the Cup after all the blood is spilled.