Here's A Friendly Reminder That Not Every Bone-Crushing, Soul-Shattering Hit Is A Dirty One
Bruce Bennett. Getty Images.The New York Rangers traded a 2023 1st round pick and a 2024 3rd round pick for Vladimir Tarsenko. They traded their 2023 2nd round pick for Patrick Kane. They hilariously traded away one of their 2023 3rd round picks for Justin Braun. They traded their 2023 4th round pick for Tyler Motte. They traded away their 2023 5th and 7th round picks for Andrew Copp. They have a grand total of 2 picks coming up in the first 5 rounds of this summer's draft.
They pay Artemi Panarin $11.65 million to completely disappear in the playoffs. Alexis Lafreniere is looking more like Alexandre Daigle with each passing day. And they just blew their best chance to make it to the Cup Final last night when they got completely obliterated by the New Jersey Devils from start to finish in game 7 of the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals.
There was only one moment in last night's game where the Rangers showed a little bit of life, and that's when Jacob Trouba delivered one of his patented "I'm going to commit manslaughter" hits on Timo Meier coming across the blue line in the 3rd period.
As the late great Mahatma Gandhi once said, "holy fucking shit".
That hit was massive. The sight of Trouba just gliding around on the ice looking at his kill while Meier laid on the ice motionless brought back plenty of memories of Scott Stevens on Eric Lindros and Paul Kariya. And while that hit sent Meier to the shadow realm and sent his gloves all the way to Trenton, it was as clean as the day is long. Sure, there was plenty of head contact on the hit. But that wasn't Trouba's fault.
Jacob Trouba didn't "pick" Meier's face as the main point of contact here. Meier's head picked Trouba's shoulder. He's hunched over so much that Trouba had no other option but to drill him in the dome. Trouba's approach was fine, he didn't make any last second adjustments, it's just that Meier's face ran into his shoulder. Don't get me wrong, Jacob Trouba is still a massive prick and everything but there's nothing wrong with that hit. And if you think there is, well then you just don't give a shit about the rules and want to ruin the game with some international bullshit.
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We can argue until we're blue in the face if Jacob Trouba is an asshole or not. But at the end of the day, we can all agree that the worst version of hockey is the IIHF version of the game. If it weren't for the fact that rooting for international hockey rules, the IIHF would be the most useless piece of shit federation known to sports. You might as well put the players in giant bubbles and make them say 4 nice things about their opponent before they're allowed to shoot. But that's what people want right now all because Jacob Trouba hits a little too hard for their liking.
You can't go with the IIHF rules of zero tolerance for any head contact because of situations exactly like the one we saw play out at the blue line of the Prudential Center last night. Why should Jacob Trouba be penalized just because Timo Meier didn't keep his head up? And what would stop guys from simply ducking their heads every time they're about to get hit to draw a penalty? It's an idiotic approach to solve a non-issue. Hockey is fast, hockey is violent. These are the plays that make hockey the game that it is. You take these types of hits out of hockey and now you have soccer on ice. Either toughen up or find another sport to watch. Timo Meier sure as shit didn't seem to care half as much as most people about that hit.
Obviously winning the series will help him feel like a million bucks in that moment. But you still love to see that from Meier. That's a hockey player right there.