Quote (Meatstick @ Jun 3 2021 09:44am)
He charged. He gained maximum speed coming in, regardless if he stopped striding slightly before. He knew what he was doing, had plenty of time to think it through, it was just dirty and unnecessary. It was illegal. The charging rules unfortunately isn’t super clear but that was textbook charging
The thing is, which hit isn't charging? There are no hits where the hitter is literally standing still, all hits begin with a player skating from a distance.
How about when a player dumps a puck at the blue line, skates directly at the D-man who's going behind the net to retrieve the puck, and finishes his check right after the D-man gets rid of the puck? The timing on those hits isn't any different than the timing on this one, and those happen 100 times a game. And obviously the forechecker has no real intention of separating the player from the puck in those instances, usually the puck has already been moved on. Sometimes D-men can get separated shoulders from these kinds of hits, but nobody ever says anything about it.
The only thing different here is the result, because Evans put himself in a lot more vulnerable of a position than what is usually the case for those D-men.
And like I said before, where does anyone expect him to go? It's a playoff game and they're down 1 with 1 minute left and the opposing team is about to score. Is he supposed to go for a line change, or skate at the opposing player? That's why I don't get the "he came from across the ice" thing. Unless he could teleport like in D2 he really didn't have much of a choice.
He did have a choice in hitting vs stick-checking, especially because stick-checking would have probably been the more effective defensive play in this situation, but that decision is not against the rules.
This post was edited by LuLer on Jun 3 2021 10:54am