NHL insider: Confused about Cale Makar hit on Kraken forward Jared McCann? Welcome to the NHL
Inside the NHL
DENVER — Kraken fans feeling they’d seen it all got their “Welcome to the NHL” moment Monday night when 40-goal man Jared McCann was likely knocked out of this opening-round playoff series with an illegal hit by Colorado Avalanche defenseman Cale Makar.
Top players getting blasted out of playoff series is nothing new, predating even the late Pat Quinn knocking Boston Bruins legend Bobby Orr out cold 54 years ago with a borderline bodycheck to the chin. Then, there’s Washington Capitals forward Dale Hunter ramming defenseless New York Islanders star Pierre Turgeon into the end boards with a cheap shot in 1993 after he’d scored in a blowout Game 6 opening-round clincher.
To be honest, Makar’s cheap shot — yes apologists, that’s what it was — on a completely unsuspecting McCann revived memories of Hunter’s hit, even if it wasn’t as bad of a hammering. In both cases, the victim players had no idea what was coming — nor should they have given active play was over — before being heaved into the boards with devastating consequences.
The difference being, Hunter was immediately suspended a record 21 games the following season while Makar will miss Game 5 alone. And even that took the NHL Department of Player Safety getting involved Tuesday morning because on-ice officials and off-ice review crews Monday night somehow were the only people watching that couldn’t figure out the puck was already headed out of play when Makar ambushed McCann.
As is, even the rationale Makar only gets suspended one game because of a clean past cited by the league while McCann seems certain to miss multiple contests — which fits right in line with NHL concussion protocol timelines — is a ridiculous way to run a major professional sports league. It’s precisely why no lesser than NHL great Mario Lemieux in 1992 famously proclaimed the NHL a “garage league” because of substandard officiating and its tolerance of wanton violence from marginal players threatening top stars.
In this case, it’s now a star inflicting that violence.
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The league has supposedly moved on from the free-for-all 1970s-1990s with talk about protecting players. Even having a Player Safety Department is, I suppose, improvement from the bad old days. But a dangerous hit is a dangerous hit regardless of who delivers it. Should the Kraken ask Matty Beniers to take down Nathan MacKinnon or Mikko Rantanen with a head shot just because of his squeaky-clean record? Absolutely not. So, best not invite that thinking. A dirty hit is a dirty hit, period. Whether it’s by Dale Hunter, Brad Marchand, Tyler Myers or Connor McDavid.
Heck, the NHL even once suspended Maurice “The Rocket” Richard the remainder of the 1955 season and playoffs for accidentally — maybe — punching a linesman. Superstars have paid a huge price before and Richard was of bigger impact than Makar.
But today’s NHL is seven decades removed from that and we’ve already seen multiple examples this opening round of inconsistent discipline meted out by the league.
Matt Dumba of the Minnesota Wild put Dallas Stars veteran Joe Pavelski out in Game 1 — and all games since — with a concussion-inducing late hit reduced from a major to a minor with no suspension. But Toronto Maple Leafs pest Michael Bunting got a three-game suspension for an illegal check to the head on Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman Erik Cernak.
Morgan Rielly of the Leafs flattens 51-goal man Brayden Point of the Lightning into the boards from behind? No problem! Keep him on, let him score the overtime winner.
Confused? Hey! Welcome to the NHL!
Makar wasn’t initially assessed a penalty. But seeing McCann sprawled semiconscious on the ice with a whistling Makar skating innocently away was the first clue officials should probably gather and discuss.
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In these situations, officials suspecting something untoward will call a five-minute major penalty and trigger an automatic video review. Then, they can go see how bad it is and uphold the penalty or downgrade it to a minor.
Somehow, even after reviewing the Makar hit on video, officials came to the erroneous conclusion the play was ongoing when Makar hit McCann.
You can only wonder what discussion took place Monday night between referees Eric Furlatt and Trevor Hanson and the NHL off-ice review panel stationed someplace behind the Oz curtain. Garage league? This was a Ford Pinto parked in the garage, blocking the Lada from getting out.
Furlatt: “Major penalty, Colorado No. 8.”
Oz: “No, wait, wait! No. 8? That’s Makar! I thought it was No. 9. You can’t give Makar a major penalty! Get back here on the headset!”
Hanson: “But he hit McCann like a Sherman tank crushing a Ford Pinto!”
Oz: “I thought you parked the Pinto in the garage! Anyway, just invoke Article 86.3 of subsection B6 and tell them some nonsense about the puck still being ‘in the battle’! No one knows what the heck that means anyway. Maybe Hakstol won’t even question it.”
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Well, Kraken coach Dave Hakstol did question it — severely — and the rest is history. The NHL took another look and decided, yeah, what were these guys thinking? And gave Makar — a lousy lone game’s suspension. I’m sure the Kraken can’t wait to see this officiating crew again. Meanwhile, a team not exactly dripping with elite scoring sees its only guy with more than 24 goals sidelined indefinitely.
The only thing more annoying than this inconsistency is online commenters pausing video in super slow motion and trying to justify any illegal hit as perfectly within the realm of hockey rules. Anyone that’s watched more than a few hundred NHL games — Hakstol among them — can easily view that Makar hit in real time, use their head and conclude that something doesn’t look right.
Anyway, this is the reality the Kraken must live with. They lived with it before when Jamie Oleksiak got a three-game suspension in December — justifiably so — for inadvertently hitting a player half a foot smaller in the head, while Justin Schultz and Matty Beniers got sidelined multiple games by dirtier, more intentionally targeted hits that avoided supplemental discipline.
And they’ll live with it now, however reluctantly, in a playoff series that sees the Kraken poised to potentially knock off the defending champs. That is, so long as they don’t try to first take somebody’s head off.
Tempting as that may seem, in today’s NHL, it’s apparently still better to self-police than rely on somebody else to do it for you.
Source: The Seattle Times
