last night’s niklas kronwall hit on marty havlat is creating some buzz around the nhl. everyone not in chicago is claiming it was a clean hit that did not deserve even a minor penalty not to mention the five minute major and game misconduct krowall recieved. it is awful that havlat was injured on the play, which was not the intent, but what other criteria does a hit need to be considered clean by nhl standards. it wasn’t from behind. check. he didn’t leave his feet until after contact. check. he kept his elbows down. check. he didn’t get the stick up. check. he only took one step. check. the puck was in havlat’s feet. check. havlat looked up and saw him twice, but made the decision to take the hit to make the play, and he did. you are fooling yourself if you think seabrook, byfuglien, or any other blackhawk would not have made the same play on a player coming up the boards with his head down. the intent isn’t to injure it is to make the opposing player pay the price for making the play, so that next time he may not.
now i am from detroit and a long time redwings supporter, but i don’t feel as though i am being a homer, when everyone from cbc, vs., and even barry melrose from espn see the play the same way. i was also concerned with the hit on kronwall by dustin byfuglien that resulted in the scrum afterwards. i wrote a blog a while back about people starting fights after clean hits, and how it could be the downfall of physical play in the nhl. the way the nhl addressed this was with the instigator rule giving the player who starts that nonsense after a hit an extra two and a ten minute misconduct. there was none of that. also the high stick on stuart from byfuglien that sent him for stitches wasn’t called, but we could break down any game call by non-call to see who had the upperhand, and it wouldn’t ever matter. each team has to rise above it. i just don’t want to see every hit called just because it is a “big” hit.
here is brian costello’s blog post about the kronwall call via thehockeynews.com
This hit will and should continued to be looked at. While it certainly isn’t worthy of a major for interference, I respectfully have to disagree that it was a 100 percent clean hit. I’ll keep my allegiance to the Blackhawks out of the breakdown as well.
I think if it was worthy of any kind of interference, it should have only been 2:00 at most. Havlat clearly never touched the puck, and even though it was between his skates, I don’t know if it having bounced off the boards into his skates constitutes “possession.” But I probably wouldn’t have called it as an interference if I was in the ref’s skates.
It does, however, appear to me to be a charge. While Kromwall didn’t take more than a stride, I would argue he left his feet before the impact. I broke it down frame-by-frame and you can see that Kromwall’s right skate is off the ice in the second (the moment of impact) and third frames and he is in an upward trajectory. By the fifth frame Havlat’s feet haven’t even been taken out from under him completely yet and Kromwall is completely airborne by at least three inches.
As I said before, I think the refs got the infraction wrong but the severity of punishment correct. It was a head hit that resulted in an injury and by rule the referees can use their discretion to call a major with a game misconduct.
