Pardon the baseball lingo in a hockey column, but Adam McQuaid just threw Brendan Shanahan a fastball right down the middle. Shanahan can knock it out of the park, and that might knock the defenseman out of a game or two.

In other words, McQuaid is probably going to be suspended. 

That’s this scribe’s guess, anyway, but if there’s one thing Shanahan’s short time as NHL disciplinarian has taught us, it’s that the guessing game when it comes to dirty plays isn’t as tough anymore. If you see a dirty play, you probably won’t see the culprit the next however many games. 

The first part of that equation – a dirty play – is what happened late in the second period Wednesday night at Scotiabank Place in Ottawa. 

Senators forward Nick Foligno poked the puck past McQuaid coming out of the Ottawa zone, and he had McQuaid beaten once he got around him. Afraid of letting that happen, the Bruins defenseman stuck out his left leg, kneeing Foligno in the process and sending his former OHL teammate to the ice. Ottawa defenseman Jared Cowen went after McQuaid, but so too did the refs when they slapped him with a five-minute major for kneeing and a game misconduct.

McQuaid, Foligno and Benoit Pouliot all played together in Sudbury for two seasons, but McQuaid and Foligno found themselves in two totally different situations Wednesday. The former was the aggressor, the latter the victim of a play for which Shanahan – who’s rightfully earned the nickname “Shanaban” based on the strict manner in which he conducts his business – won’t stand.

McQuaid, who is 6-foot-5 and about 210 pounds, is big and strong enough to hurt people if he wanted to, but he isn't that type of player. He's as physical as they come, but he's never done anything to be considered "dirty." Still, the play happened and, and the league will likely have something to say.

For a frame of reference on how Shanahan might rule on such a play, you don’t need to look too far back. Avalanche forward Kevin Porter was suspended for four games for kneeing David Booth last week (click here to see the video), though the two cases have both similarities and differences. 

Like McQuaid, Porter was a first-time offender when he stuck his leg out to make knee-to-knee contact, and that’s something Shanahan took into consideration when determining whether or not there was malicious intent. The lesson: Nice guy or not, dirty plays get you suspended. That’s what Wednesday night’s play was, and unless the league wants a continent-wide uproar, this too will result in a suspension.

(While we're on the subject of "clean players" and "dirty players," those labels are thrown around far too liberally. Clean players commit dirty hits. Simple as that, no? Think of it this way: Daniel Paille and Matt Cooke should never be uttered in the same sentence. Deeming a player dirty because of a dirty hit takes attention away from the real problem players in the league.)

The difference between McQuaid’s hit and Porter’s hit was that McQuaid did not seriously injure his opponent, whereas Porter did. Booth is out with a sprained ligament in his right knee and is expected to be out until at least mid-January. Though the play looked pretty scary Wenesday night, Foligno was back on the ice less than a minute and a half later. That might help McQuaid’s case with Shanahan, but don’t expect it to completely bail him out. 

Because Foligno ended up being OK, it would be surprising to see McQuaid receive the same punishment as Porter. Still, you can expect McQuaid to join Brad Marchand as Bruins players disciplined by the league this week. The guess here is two games. 

When/if (and probably more likely when than if) McQuaid is suspended, the Bruins had better hope that Zdeno Chara will be back and ready to go. The Bruins’ captain, who suffered a leg injury on his collision with Antoine Vermette Saturday against the Blue Jackets, has missed the last two games, and the Boston Globe reported Sunday that he was expected to miss this week’s games. The B’s are off until Saturday’s showdown of Eastern Conference heavyweights in Philadelphia, and the fact that Chara skated Wednesday morning suggests all is well in his recovery. 

If Chara is unable to play and McQuaid ends up being suspended, the B’s, who already have had to call Steven Kampfer’s number, will be looking at another callup. Matt Bartkowski was a bit of a liability and was given very little ice time in his three games with the team while Kampfer and other blueliners couldn’t go, and he was a minus-2 despite totaling less than 20 minutes of ice time. 

With Chara out the last two games, the Bruins have had to call upon their other blueliners to take on more minutes, and McQuaid was one of them. He played a season-high 18:20 Tuesday night against the Kings, and had logged over 12 minutes at the time of his penalty at 17:45 of the second period. 

The Bruin who had to step it up most minutes-wise Wednesday was McQuaid’s usual partner in Andrew Ference. Claude Julien has been mixing and matching more with his defensemen since the Chara injury, and Wednesday saw Ference play a team-high and season-high 27:33. Of course, 5:20 of that time came because the B’s found themselves shorthanded five times, but the fact that Ference handled the extra workload without a hitch is a good sign for the B’s. Ference had a pair of assists and was a plus-3 on the night.

Now the question is how much more these guys can step up if they find themselves without both Chara and McQuaid Saturday in Philadelphia. The Flyers’ offense showed Tuesday against the Capitals that they can still generate offense without Claude Giroux (they defeated Washington, 5-1), and if the B’s have only four of their regular defensemen going, they’ll need to give Kampfer and whoever else (presumably Bartkowski) some more ice time. 

That’s all if McQuaid gets suspended, of course. It’s hard to imagine that not happening.