The NHL Has Chose Violence This Year And The Bodies Are Flying
Michael Martin. Getty Images.I've got a working theory right now so just bear with me for a moment here.
We all know that hockey has gotten a bit softer over the years. Personally I don't think that's to any fault of the players, but more the league making it more difficult for guys to run around out there trying to take each other's heads off. Rules have been put in place to make the game less violent. And with that, the development of skill and speed has been prioritized over everything. Which, in turn, has basically made it impossible for tough guys to crack lineups if they can't really play. So for years now, the enforcer role has been rapidly declining in the game. And now that there are only like 3 true heavyweights left in the league, it's fucking go time. Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times. That sort of thing.
Welcome to the hard times.
Holy smokes. That's the 3rd massive hit over the course of a week. And just to be clear, that's a good clean hockey hit. Nothing particularly wrong with that at all. Does Lomberg catch MacDonald in the head? For sure. But he lowers the shoulder and goes through the body first. Maybe he could have gotten just a little bit lower, but that hit is as clean as the day is long.
The same thing goes for the Jacob Trouba hits on MacKinnon and Khaira.
The Khaira hit was the most questionable out of all of them. But here's the thing--Ryan Lomberg lays a massive hit on Jacob MacDonald he has to fight Nicolas Aube-Kubel after. Trouba drills MacKinnon and has to answer the bell immediately to Landeskog. Trouba knocks out Khaira and has to fight Riley Stillman. Now I don't know much of anything about Stillman, but Landeskog is the toughest customer out of all those guys. And while I think Landeskog is a mutant who likes to go berserk from time to time, I don't think Trouba would necessarily lose sleep the night before a game having to fight him. What I'm getting at here is that guys don't even have to think twice about being human wrecking balls out there if the only thing they have to worry about is a quick wrestling match on skates afterwards. Hell, Trouba is already back to laying people out like a truck.
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Good, clean, hard hitting hockey. Nothing to not love about that. Unless, of course, you're the dude getting bulldozed.
But the point I'm getting at here is that all the rules the NHL implemented to make it a safer game has effectively rendered the enforcer useless in today's game. And unless you're a team with a Ryan Reaves or a Tom Wilson on the roster, it's officially NHL Hitz 2022 out there. Huge hits. We've got biting incidents.
Brendan Lemieux going full Claude and becoming the league's most hated villain.
And all hell breaking loose at the end of last night's game in Colorado.
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Hockey: Officially violent again.
By the way, I have one other working theory here. You figure NHL Hitz 2002 is 20 years old at this point. Which means that pretty much everybody in the league probably grew up playing Hitz, and now they're just living out their childhood dreams. Tough to watch that intro video and not immediately want to start seeing head roll.