I'm a huge Sens fan, and an ever bigger fan of Alfie, but I can't believe anyone could watch that play last night and doubt for a second that Alfie was targeting Neidermayer. With a second left on the clock, why not simply flip the puck into the other end? A slapshot was definitely not required, and in fact would only make retrieval easier along the boards if his only intent was to clear the puck.
The repositioning and reloading of the slapshot could only mean that it was intentional, and I lost a lot of respect for Alfie in that second. If he had a problem with Neids, why not man up and go chin to chin with him. Just jaw at him if you don't actually want to fight, but shooting a puck directly at him was bush league at best.
And it's not like Alfie helped the Sens in any way with this. The ref had a long chat with Alfie by the bench at the start of the third period, and you could see that Alfie didn't like what he was hearing. I'm guessing the conversation went something like "I know what you did, and you're nuts if you think you're getting any calls this period." There were some obvious infractions (like the slash on Corvo that set up a mini-breakaway) that weren't called, and I would not be surprised at all if the refs put their whistles in their pockets largely because of this incident.
I am surprised to hear the general level of support for Alfie (or unwillingness to accept blame) being shown by the fans here. I'm still a fan of Alfie, but he blew it on this one.