So for most of Sunday night’s game between the Vancouver Canucks and the Edmonton Oilers, there were two parallel narratives: one on the ice and one on social media.
On the ice: How Vancouver badly won the goalie battle, rookie Arturs Silovs playing exceptionally well (and much better than his Oilers counterpart Stuart Skinner). Silovs stopped 41 of 44 shots. He was the absolute difference-maker in Vancouver’s 4-3 victory, which gave the Canucks a 2-1 lead in the NHL Western Conference semifinal series.
On social media: How officiating bias was working against the Oilers, who weren’t getting their fair share of calls, from the officiating tandem of Chris Rooney and Graham Skilliter.
But in the end, the dirtiest play of the night came once the final whistle had blown; and Silovs had made one last stop to win the game in regulation time.
![Will the NHL take action against Carson Soucy for his reckless cross-check to Connor McDavid’s face? Will the NHL take action against Carson Soucy for his reckless cross-check to Connor McDavid’s face?](https://i0.wp.com/keynoteusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Will-the-NHL-take-action-against-Carson-Soucy-for-his.jpg?resize=1170%2C780&ssl=1)
Connor McDavid was behind the net, fighting with Carson Soucy. Soucy checked on McDavid and McDavid cut off his pants. It wasn’t much until Soucy’s defense partner Nikita Zadorov joined the fray. While Zadorov controlled McDavid from behind him, causing his knees to buckle, Soucy controlled him at the throat.
Carson Soucy catches McDavid with a cross-check after the final buzzer 😳 pic.twitter.com/Gf03SqgE0l
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) May 13, 2024
That hit crossed the line.
Yes, playoff hockey is intense. Yes, teams usually can’t sit still once the final whistle blows because these are best-of-seven series, and once Game 3 is over, the posturing for Game 4 begins.
However, the Canucks will be lucky to make it to Game 4, with Soucy in the lineup.
A cross-control in the face, like the one he gave, took the punishment to another level. In the end, Soucy was assessed a minor penalty at the buzzer, which is completely inconsequential if the NHL doesn’t apply supplemental discipline.
NHL playoff hockey is, of course, a different animal than the regular season. Some players are simply made for it; Zadorov is an example of this. Zadorov, acquired from the Calgary Flames in a trade earlier this season, was added because of his size and willingness to play a physical game. At times, his regular season play was erratic. But in the playoffs, and especially in this series against the Oilers, he has been a powerful and intimidating force.
At one point in Sunday’s game, he finished a check on Evander Kane, which threw Kane to the Edmonton bench. Not content with simply pushing Kane off the ice surface, Zadorov followed up with two more pushes to ensure he stayed there. That earned him a harsh penalty. Still, he didn’t end up costing the Canucks anything because the Oilers were penalized for a minor foul on the bench, for retaliating from the bench.
The Canucks acquired Zadorov just for these moments in the playoffs; he understands that in playoff hockey, someone needs to fill the role of Vancouver’s villain because if no one does, the McDavids and Leon Draisaitl will eventually make you pay.
![Will the NHL take action against Carson Soucy for his reckless cross-check to Connor McDavid's face? Carson Soucy’s cross-check to Connor McDavid’s face was reckless. What will the NHL do?](https://i0.wp.com/keynoteusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Will-the-NHL-take-action-against-Carson-Soucy-for-his.jpg?resize=633%2C422&ssl=1)
Zadorov can be clever about it, too. Presumably, he understood that his post-game cross-checking with McDavid was borderline enough to escape further NHL justice. So thinking strategically.
Soucy, on the other hand, let himself be carried away by the last answer. You simply cannot cross someone’s throat, at any time. The NHL’s player safety department has been eerily silent so far in these playoffs, even as controversies over referees mount from game to game and series to series.
The fact that McDavid was on the receiving end of that double-check adds fuel to the fire. Remember, less than three years ago, a popular narrative was how McDavid couldn’t get a break from NHL referees; That statistically, he took very few penalties, considering his skill level, his time on ice, and his production.
The controversy came to a head in November 2021, at a time when McDavid was second in the league in scoring but only 57th when it came to penalty kills. And this after having gone through an entire playoff the previous year without receiving a penalty, something truly unimaginable, considering the way he plays.
When McDavid finally commented on that, he was called by none other than John Tortorella, who was then between coaching jobs and working as a broadcaster for ESPN. Tortorella advised him: “Honestly, shut up. “Stop talking about it.”
It almost seemed as if McDavid, because he had an overdrive that mere mortals couldn’t match, took more punishment than he deserved for being too good.
Eventually, the moment passed and the controversy faded.
There is sometimes a perception that the NHL goes out of its way not to protect elite players because it could show favoritism. This, of course, makes no sense. Players only want one thing from referees: consistency, to the extent possible, from shift to shift, period to period, and game to game.
That is the same treatment for official players as for the stars of the game. But coherence must also work in both directions. You can’t ignore what happened here, just because it was McDavid, being mistreated. What Soucy did was reckless and dangerous. A suspension is almost certainly coming. Otherwise, what is already a rowdy Oilers-Canucks series has a real chance of devolving into complete chaos.
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