Keeler: O, Captain! Avalanche needs leader to deliver message to Stars goon Jamie Benn that Gabe Landeskog can’t

DALLAS — Jamie Benn needs to “feel” you, as Nuggets coach Michael Malone likes to say. Right between the ears.

If the NHL won’t send a message to Benn, the Dallas Stars’ goon in green, then the Avalanche must. Starting with Game 3 Saturday night at Ball Arena.

Legal hit? More like calculated assault. At worst, the Dallas captain should’ve seen five minutes in the sin bin for his cheap shot of Avs defender Devon Toews some 2:43 into the second period of Game 2.

Benn launched. He left his feet. Toews’ head snapped like a crash test dummy. Officials declared it a shoulder-on-shoulder crime and suggested we all move on. To paraphrase my best pal Deion Sanders, that’s some bull junk, right there.

For one, even if the Stars winger was aiming for Toews’ shoulder, at least one angle showed him connecting directly with No. 7’s neck. Which, last I checked, is connected to and immediately south of the head.

“I mean, does he catch a piece of his shoulder? Yeah, I guess you could argue that,” Avs coach Jared Bednar, whose team returns to Denver after a road split at American Airlines Center, replied when I asked about the collision. “But the target is high and it’s at his head, and he makes contact with the head. And I’ve seen, many times, guys get called for the head shot and penalty with a lot less than that. But I guess they didn’t think so.”

Two, Benn knew exactly what he was doing. The Stars knew what he was doing. Dallas coach Pete DeBoer, whose Vegas teams delighted in pushing the Avs around in the postseason, knew darn well.

“Benner has been outstanding in this playoff. I thought against Vegas he did and he did (it) smart,” the Stars boss said late Thursday night. “He did it at the right times and he did it clean. But his presence physically is having an impact for us in these playoffs in a real positive way.’’

Kareem Jackson, my man, you chose the wrong sport. DeBoer woulda loved you.

In the NFL, Benn’s shot is an ejection, a fine, a suspension and a chat with the safety cops.

In the NHL, it’s a “real positive” presence, a strategic wrinkle in a no-holds-barred, merciless bracket.

The refs decided the hit was at Toews’ shoulder blade and not a head shot. Some slo-mo angles showed otherwise, especially as the D-man pinged off another Dallas player like a rag dol. By the letter of the law, it looked (makes air quotes) “clean.”

But barely legal is still barely.

“It is what it is,” Bednar said. “You’ve got to play through it.”

You’ve got to respond. After that hit, Gabe Landeskog would’ve found a convenient, strategic moment in the action to kindly re-arrange Benn’s face.

Once a bully knows they can get away with murder in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, there’s only way to stop a killing spree.

Someone’s gotta pick up the Captain’s spine. Someone’s gotta let Benn know that this won’t stand. And neither will he.

Someone’s gotta pick up Landy’s steel. Landy’s soul.

It’s not in Nathan MacKinnon’s game, bless him. It’s not in Cale Makar’s DNA, although a reactive shove after Toews got clocked landed him in an awkward headlock for a few seconds.

“Hopefully there was no intent into the head,” Avs forward Andrew Cogliano said of the Benn ambush.

Then, instead of walking it back, Cogs walked it forward.

“Maybe there was, obviously, a little bit to the head,” he added. “But, yeah, I don’t know.”

He knew. Everybody did.

“It’s a physical game this time of year,” Bednar said, “but I just can’t understand how that was not a penalty. Even if it isn’t a five (minute major).”

Join the club. Fortunately, Toews returned to the ice, but Benn needs a break. And a lesson. If the league won’t do it, somebody in burgundy and blue needs to apply a little elbow grease.

Better yet, the whole elbow.

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