If you were betting on who was going to throw the first highly questionable hit of this series, the safest picks would've been Brad Marchand and Nazem Kadri. Congrats if you went with Kadri.
The Maple Leafs' No. 2 center earned himself a five-minute major and game misconduct for a vicious hit to Tommy Wingels' head 8:18 into the third period of Thursday's Game 1 while the Bruins fourth-liner was already down on the ice.
Wingels had just thrown a hit on Mitch Marner and appeared to catch him a little high, but Kadri then responded by going off the rails and lining up Wingels while he was in a vulnerable position on his knees up against the boards. Wingels was down for a couple minutes and needed some help getting off the ice. He did not take another shift for the final 11-plus minutes of the game.
The NHL's Department of Player Safety will obviously be taking a further look at Kadri's hit, and given that Kings defenseman Drew Doughty was just suspended one game for this hit to the head, and that Kadri already has a history of bad hits, you'd have to imagine Kadri will miss at least Game 2. Kadri has been suspended three times previously, most recently in April 2016.
The player safety department announced shortly after the game that Kadri would have a hearing Friday. Here's a look at the hit:
Nazem Kadri back to the penalty box for this hit on Tommy Wingels. This one is definitely bad, possibly even supplemental bad. pic.twitter.com/tZ3HI1SBNY
— Jeff Veillette (@JeffVeillette) April 13, 2018The Big Bad Blog is presented by:
