  Chris Pronger smiles during media availability at Wachovia Center in Philadelphia. (Alex Urosevic/QMI Agency)
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PHILADELPHIA — It is all about Chris Pronger.
Everywhere you look. Everywhere you turn.
The Chicago Blackhawks can’t stop talking about him, even when they don’t want to. And they can’t avoid him. And in a Stanley Cup final where so many of the best players from the two best teams have not been the best players, you have to go back to Pronger, aptly described by Sports Illustrated’s Michael Farber as an “international man of misery.”
Not only has Pronger been the single dominant figure of the Cup final — on the ice and off — but he seems to be in the heads of the Blackhawks, which isn’t necessarily a bad place to be.
He leads this series in ice time, hits, defensive presence, news conference humour, on-ice silliness with pucks, and has outscored Mike Richards and Jonathan Toews combined. All this, he smiled, for “an old guy.”
An old guy who is getting under the skin of the Blackhawks by playing what they consider to be dirty hockey. That, of course, is nothing new for Pronger. It’s who he is, what he does. If he can get away with it, he will. But while the Hawks have whined about him getting away with too much, he is actually playing more under control than he had in his last Stanley Cup final with the Anaheim Ducks.
Pronger has learned to push the limit and then pull back, which has made him more effective with age.
“I think if you can be dirty and get away with it, you’re going to help your club,” said John Madden, who used to play with Scott Stevens in New Jersey and knows a little something about flaunting the rules. “But there’s a fine line. It all depends on how the game is being called and what’s going on the ice. You put your team at risk if you do stuff like that.”
But he isn’t putting the Flyers at any kind of risk. For one thing, the Flyers penalty killing has been superb in the Stanley Cup final. Going into Game 4, they have killed 27 of the past 28 man advantage situations against them. It lessens the pressure on Pronger to take a penalty. But more than that, Pronger has been on the ice almost every shift against the Hawks big line of Toews, Patrick Kane and Dustin Byfuglien. Pronger, himself, has more points than any member of the big Chicago line.
And they are trying to find a way to deal with him, as they try and find offence from the usual sources.
“It’s that type of thing where you have to try and accept and take it from him, because it’s the way he plays,” Toews said. “It just seems, like you know, it doesn’t go as noticed as it would with another player. He has done his job. We have to do so more and take him off his game.”
Even Pronger’s old coach, Joel Quenneville, has piped in on the big defenceman. Probably nobody in the series knows Pronger any better than Quenneville, who coached him for years in St. Louis.
Quenneville believes Pronger is getting away with obstruction and stick work that should be penalized but hasn’t been. He is doing the noble coach thing: Making sure the referees are aware he isn’t happy about the non-calls.
“There was one that got my attention,” said Quenneville, referring back to Game 3. “Whether it’s stick use or obstruction. I think we’ll keep an eye on it.”
He may keep an eye on it. Whether the referees choose to call it is another matter entirely. But this is how it is with Pronger: Always a lot of talk. Positive. Negative. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish one from the other.
