When Boston’s Milan Lucic freight-trained Buffalo goalie Ryan Miller on Nov. 12, it set off an unusual chain of events. After the N.H.L.’s chief disciplinarian, Brendan Shanahan, did not suspend Lucic, the league’s general managers gave him new marching orders, saying that similar future incidents should be punishable by suspension. The N.H.L. will protect goalies the way the N.F.L. protects quarterbacks.  Miller sustained a concussion. The Sabres’ response to the incident was also viewed as weak. They neither started a fight nor avenged the hit by running over Boston’s goalie, Tim Thomas. Not an especially physical team, the Sabres were branded as soft, lacking the necessary spine to stand up to the rugged champion Bruins, or any other team for that matter. As a result, they are burdened with the expectation that they must exact retribution when they host Boston on Wednesday.  Using a memorable turn of phrase on Tuesday, Sabres Coach Lindy Ruff told WGR radio in Buffalo: “There are situations inside of a game that call for a lack of discipline, and this was one of them.”  The day before, Ruff met individually with players from noon until 5 p.m., mostly to discuss their failure to impose frontier justice on Lucic and the Bruins.  “It was a hard day for all of us,” Ruff said. “It was a hard conversation about what happened.”  Sabres players expressed a sense of shame at not retaliating.  “I’m embarrassed that we didn’t respond the way we should have,” center Paul Gaustad said.  Tyler Myers, the 2009-10 rookie of the year, a 6-foot-8 defenseman who doesn’t fight, was scratched from the Sabres’ next game, in part because he did not respond to Lucic’s hit. Asked if Myers should adopt a meaner stance, Ruff replied, “I’ll just use the words physical and more determined.”  Questions also arose about team chemistry. Were the Sabres unwilling to stand up for Miller?  “A lot’s been said about it, and you know what? These guys have my back,” an emotional Miller told The Buffalo News.  As the issue simmered, broader questions arose about hockey’s peculiar vigilante ethos. Throughout most of the sport’s history, bad hits have brought fisticuffs. In recent seasons that practice has become muted to a degree. The on-ice officials used to allow fights to proceed, but they now step in more often to break them up.  Skirmishes still break out after heavy hits, even legal ones when they are delivered to a star or a smaller player. But rules against instigating fights, as well as the heightened threat of suspension under the Shanahan administration, are increasingly preventing teams from turning their tough guys loose to exact revenge. On the night Lucic bowled over Miller, the Sabres’ designated pest, Patrick Kaleta, had just returned from a four-game suspension for head-butting. His hands were tied by the risk of a much longer suspension for starting a vengeance fight with the Bruins.  That night, the new Hockey Hall of Fame inductee Mark Howe, a highly respected defenseman who retired in 1995, told Canadian TV viewers he preferred the style of his era because “the players policed the game.”  “There’s so much onus placed on the officials right now,” said Howe, who had low penalty totals and only four fights in his 22-year W.H.A. and N.H.L. career despite being the son of Gordie Howe, one of the roughest players in history. “I don’t mind the fighting in the game.”  “The game in the old days got rid of the pretenders,” Howe added. “And if someone was taking a shot at your best player, somebody got rid of that thing right away.”  Historically, notions that on-ice officials were overburdened with keeping the peace and that the league was ineffective in punishing transgressors were partly the sources of hockey’s self-policing approach.  But those elements of the game have changed in recent years. The presence of a second referee over the last decade has meant that fewer incidents go undetected on the ice. And with Shanahan’s new department of player safety dedicated to discipline issues, the league has become more proactive in fining and suspending players for crossing the line.  If the N.H.L. is indeed moving to diminish the role of fighting in the game gradually, a commitment to giving Shanahan firm direction to punish rule-breakers will go a long way toward changing the retaliatory habits of players.  But Lucic, who has a reputation as a brutally efficient fighter, seemed surprised — even cocky — when the Sabres did nothing after he rammed Miller.  “We wouldn’t accept anything like that,” Lucic told reporters after the game. “We would have taken care of business. But we’re a different team than they are.”  Those are fighting words. On Wednesday, under hockey’s code of retribution, many expect the Sabres to redeem themselves, with their fists.
The Buffalo Sabres did not strike back after their goalie was battered against Boston. Rules changes and stronger policing by the N.H.L. may be rewriting the leagueâs code of retribution.