They are supposed to extract a penalty for taking out a star player with an illegal hit (doesn’t matter if it’s shoulder to shoulder when the player wasn’t eligible to be hit), and they’re certainly supposed to prevent the meathead from running around trying to lay more hits in the next period. Neither occurred.
Failing that - hit someone. Anyone. Stop passing up hits on their defensemen.
This was the thing that annoyed me most about Johnston. I get that people want revenge, but to me, that's counter-productive in a close a game if it's done wrong. Gudas laid a great open-ice hit after Carlsson got hurt - THAT'S the way it should be done. Your mileage may vary.
Johnston repeatedly passed up opportunities to crunch their defensemen on the forecheck. There was one play - I forget if it was the end of the second period or the beginning of the third - when the Ducks dumped the puck into the corner (of course!). They cut to the camera in that corner at ice level (which I hate, incidentally, but I digress) and you could see the Kraken d-man come and pick the puck up. Then Johnston comes into the frame skating toward the d-man and I thought, "Oh man, Ross is going to level this guy." But then the d-man shot the puck along the boards and Johnston (despite that guy still being eligible to be hit because the puck had just left his stick) just peeled off, skated behind the net, and chased the play, never touching the guy.
It was so deflating. What the heck is he even in the lineup for if not to punish defenders and put the fear of God into them? Or create turnovers by separating them from the puck? Or piss them off so that they go after him and take a dumb penalty?
