It Might Be Time For Some People To Stop Watching Hockey If You Have A Major Problem With This Matt Dumba Hit On Joe Pavelski
Tom Pennington. Getty Images.Okay so right off the bat, you gotta hope that Joe Pavelski is fine here. It sounds like he was doing okay after the game which is a great sign. You obviously never want to see a guy get injured, especially when it's a head injury. But just because you never want to see anybody get hurt out there doesn't mean that it'll never happen. Hockey is a fast and violent game. Sometimes when the game is that fast and that violent, situations like this will happen.
Was the hit "late"? Well that's a bit of a loaded question. Because firstly, it depends on which league you're playing in. If this were an international game in the IIHF, then sure. Their rule for a late hit is anytime you make contact with a player who no longer has the puck. But in the NHL, you're given a window of 0.6 seconds after a player releases the puck that you can still finish your check. And if that's the guideline we're working with here, then this hit still may not have been early but it also sure as shit wasn't late.
I hate using screenshots to breakdown hits just as much as the next guy, but you can see Dumba starting to line up his hit on Pavelski here when he still has the puck on his stick. About a quarter of a second later the puck is gone and maybe a quarter of a second after that, Dumba blows him up. It all happens so damn fast that it is bordering on being physically impossible for Matt Dumba's brain register what is happening and tell his body to disengage. It would be like running full speed towards a wall and trying to stop your body exactly 0.6 seconds before it. Like I said before, the hit might not have been early but it's also really hard to consider this to be egregiously late.
The same thing goes for whether the hit was high or not. For me, this was the best angle to decide that.
Dumba doesn't drive up on this hit. If anything, he literally attempted to drive down. He lowers his shoulder, has his arm down, and drives through Pavelski's shoulder. Now don't get me wrong. The result of that hit was still pretty gnarly. Which is what the 2-minute minor for roughing was for. But the main reason why Pavelski came out of this collision with a scary looking head injury is because his head then smacked on the ice. Is it Matt Dumba's fault that hockey is played on a rock hard sheet of ice?
There are 3 types of hits in hockey. There are hits that are clean, there are hits that are dirty, and there are hits that fall somewhere in the middle. This is one of them. Just because a hit isn't totally clean doesn't automatically make it fully dirty. Players shouldn't get suspended for hits that aren't fully dirty. They shouldn't get fined for hits that aren't fully dirty. They should receive a 2-minute minor for roughing and then have to answer the bell when Max Domi comes into the scrum looking to punch your face off.
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At the end of the day I have no major problem with the hit, I have no problem with the ref's call on the ice, and I have no problem with Max Domi going after Matt Dumba trying to punch his lights out. The result of it sucks with Pavelski getting hurt, sure. But my advice to anyone who has any more issue with the incident than that would be to maybe just stop watching hockey.