There has been a pretty concerning trend that has emerged during Bruins games at TD Garden over the last couple weeks. It has nothing to do with the team’s play, though.
No, the trend we’re talking about is hits from behind that are injuring players and being met with minimal punishment from the refs and the league.
Just in the last two weeks, there have been four hits that have knocked players out for the remainder of the game. All four certainly looked like checks from behind, although none were actually called as such. The four hits were punished by a total of six penalty minutes and not a single fine or suspension.
The most recent of these hits came Tuesday night when Seattle forward Yanni Gourde drilled Bruins defenseman Urho Vaakanainen right in the numbers and sent him face-first into the glass. Vaakanainen was bleeding from his face as a result and was pulled from the game by the NHL’s independent concussion spotter. He did not return. There was no update on his status as of Wednesday.
Somehow, there was initially no call. Neither ref raised his arm right away. Once it was clear Vaakanainen was in trouble and wasn’t getting up, the refs huddled and eventually announced they were calling a five-minute major for boarding. They did so not because one of them thought that was the right call, but because calling a major allowed them to review the play and either uphold the major call or reduce it to a minor. For some reason, they reduced it to a minor.
The NHL’s Department of Player Safety has not announced any hearing for Gourde as of early Wednesday afternoon, which almost certainly means there won’t be any supplemental discipline. When they intend to issue any, the announcement of the hearing almost always comes by 11 a.m. or so.
Bruins coach Bruce Cassidy didn’t like the hit and didn’t like the way the refs called it.
“Well, he got him from behind in the numbers,” Cassidy said. “His head went into the glass. The concussion spotter took him off and he never returned. So I didn’t like the hit at all. For them not to make a call on it was unbelievable to me. … I don’t understand the standard tonight for that not to be a call immediately, and maybe even a five, never mind having to look at it just to get two. Again, hits that nobody likes -- tight area, he’s in a bad spot, didn’t turn into the hit. He’s kind of sideways the whole time. So, didn’t like it at all.”
It marked the fourth straight Bruins home game with a hit like this. On Jan. 20, Capitals forward Garnet Hathaway hit Marchand from behind in the corner. Marchand suffered an apparent shoulder injury and did not return to the game. He was expected to miss at least another game, but surprisingly played two days later. Hathaway got a two-minute minor for interference, which wasn’t even the right penalty to call.
During that next game, Winnipeg forward Pierre-Luc Dubois hit Matt Grzelcyk from behind, knocking Grzelcyk out of the game with an upper-body injury. Grzelcyk missed two more games as a result. Despite one of the refs standing about three feet away and looking right at the hit, there was no call.
Two days after that, the Bruins were the ones throwing the questionable hit, with Oskar Steen hitting Anaheim forward Nicolas Deslauriers from behind. Deslauriers went face-first into the glass, but actually missed the rest of the game with a lower-body injury, possibly because of how hard his knees/legs went into the boards. Similar to Gourde, Steen was initially assessed a five-minute major, only to have it perplexingly reduced to a minor.
In all four cases, these are clearly hits to a player’s back that can and have caused injuries. At least one -- Gourde on Vaakanainen -- caused a head injury, which is something the NHL supposedly cares about. Hitting from behind has always been a major penalty in the past. It’s unclear why it’s not now. The NHL rulebook still says that checking from behind MUST be called a major and a game misconduct (Rule 43). There is no minor penalty for checking from behind. Here is the full rule:
“A check from behind is a check delivered on a player who is not aware of the impending hit, therefore unable to protect or defend himself, and contact is made on the back part of the body. When a player intentionally turns his body to create contact with his back, no penalty shall be assessed.”
None of the four feature a player turning at the last second. The part that could be debated is the “not aware of the impending hit.” But what does that even mean? If the player on the receiving end is aware that there’s a player there, does that mean he should also be anticipating a hit, even if it’s from behind?
That wouldn’t really seem to hold up. In the NHL’s own video rulebook explaining what checking from behind is, the second example they use is clearly a situation where the Winnipeg player on the receiving end knows a Penguins player is closing on him. Earlier this season, Montreal’s Cedric Paquette was suspended two games for boarding Anaheim’s Trevor Zegras on a play where Zegras clearly knew Paquette was there, as evidenced by him starting to change direction as Paquette closes in.
Even that, though, was called boarding and not checking from behind. For whatever reason, there seems to be an unwillingness to call anything a “check from behind.” The same week as Paquette’s suspension, Capitals star Alex Ovechkin got nothing for a blatant hit from behind on Ottawa’s Nick Paul.
Inconsistency has long been an issue with the Department of Player Safety, but at this point it’s almost not even inconsistent. Instead the league seems to be veering towards a more dangerous level of consistency, one where the punishment for hits from behind that are causing injuries is no more than a two-minute minor.
It's shifting the onus back to players to "police" the game themselves, which is how you end up with a near-line brawl between the Bruins and Kraken on Gourde's next shift after leaving the penalty box. Maybe that's what the NHL wants, but that would be a departure from the past, when Player Safety was supposed to help cut down on retaliatory hits and fights.
It’s hard to shake the feeling that it’s going to take a really serious injury before the league actually cracks down.
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