Matthew Tkachuk has skated free from his part in the violent hits on Zack Kassian Saturday night because the NHL doesn’t think either wallop was over-the-line, but Kassian will be talking to the league’s Player Safety folks Monday and he probably won’t escape further punishment.
If the Player Safety department is looking for a precedent, they might call up the video of Kassian’s Edmonton Oilers teammate Darnell Nurse beating up Roman Polak in March, 2016 after the then San Jose defenceman Polak drilled an unsuspecting Matt Hendricks into the end boards. Nurse got a three-game suspension because it violated the NHL rule about fighting an unwilling combattant.
“I maybe went a little overboard,” Nurse admitted after the incident.
That’s what the Player Safety people might say about Kassian, even if he wasn’t defending a teammate but taking matters into his own hands while Tkachuk refuses to drop his gloves. And that’s the way the hockey code should work.
“Both hits delivered on Kassian were legal, full body checks to a player carrying the puck,” said the NHL in a statement, even though it appeared the Calgary winger took four strides, left his feet slightly and with his elbows in, shoulder up, drilled the Edmonton forward in the head as he went around the net in the first period at the Saddledome. Kassian certainly had the puck as he was dogged on his shoulder by Flames captain Mark Giordano but video clips show him being hit in the head as it snapped back, as he flew through the air and his helmet came off.
In a tweet, former NHLer Scottie Upshall defiantly said that hit was predatory.
“For those u haven’t played the game…. coming down from your WING (as a winger) to hit a vulnerable guy on a wraparound is as DIRTY as it gets. Such as BELOW. I know because I’ve done it, lots. I deserved a punch in the face too. If this hit was on McDavid, 10 GAMER MIN!”
In another tweet, Upshall, now playing in Switzerland but an old-school, settle things on the ice competitor, said “Kassian paid the price already (double-minor that Calgary scored on to win the game). By the third hit, he had enough and let the kid know it’s still a man’s game. Sometimes a punch in the face is what a guy needs.”
The NHL disagrees, feeling on the late second period wallop by Tkachuk was a hockey play that Kassian went postal on. He grabbed Tkachuk, who wouldn’t fight and threw a blizzard of punches while the linesmen were very slow to break it up. He shrugged off the first Tkachuk hit but not the last one two minutes from the second intermission.
He thought it was a Raffi Torres type play; the NHL disagreed, calling it clean. If he gets three games, that means he won’t play in the rematch here Jan. 29. Oilers play Nashville here Tuesday and Arizona Saturday. It also means they’ve lost their first-line right-winger which will necessitate some roster juggling.
The Battle of Alberta certainly needs the juice of the Tkachuk-Kassian rivalry. The hits and the fight and the cheeky war of words afterwards is good for business.
Of course, it was pretty tame stuff in today’s sanitized NHL, compared to the old-school violent Uncivil War between the two clubs but it livened things up
Calgary fans think Tkachuk is a fine young fellow, a kid who plays hard and who did nothing wrong to be rag-dolled by Kassian. In OilerNation, he’s the blackest of the black hats in Calgary; they grudgingly acknowledge that he’s a helluva player, always in the middle of the action with a high skill-set, but they think he’s a serial hit and run guy, a guy who starts stuff but won’t back it up.
“It’s boys being boys, right? It’s two guys competing. That’s why you play the game,” said Calgary coach Geoff Ward, who felt there was no real harm, just lots of mayhem. “Gets both benches going. Both guys doing whatever they can to get a spark for their team, trying to gain momentum.
“The only thing I’d like to have seen was one of the linesmen jumping in a little sooner. I thought one of the linesmen could have gotten in and grabbed Kassian but that’s what it is.”
For those who think Tkachuk never fights, he’s had seven in his NHL career, ranging from tussles with big aggressive guys to greasy guys to non-fighters. Brooks Orpik, Matt Dumba, Jake Dotchin, Alex Wennberg, Joe Cramarossa, Ryan Kesler and Brayden McNab.
To his credit, at least Tkachuk was drilling Kassian, who has had 33 NHL fights, not going after Connor McDavid or Leon Draisaitl Saturday night.
The villain angle harkens back to the 80s when Neal Sheehy was sliming Wayne Gretzky and wouldn’t fight after slamming him into the boards even though his bio said he was the heavyweight boxing champ at Harvard, a joke because there was no fight team. He was hated here.
“Made my career,” the current player agent Sheehy has said over and over again.
Maybe the oddest comment to come out of the angry game Saturday was Rasmus Andersson’s on a Flames post-game show.
“They’ve got a lot of pretenders over there. That’s one of the biggest coward moves I’ve ever seen from Kassian. That’s the kind of player he is,” said the Swedish defenceman, whose had two career bouts against Brayden Schenn and Jared McCann.
Now them’s fighting words.
