Stanley Cup Final: Why suspend Carson Soucy but not Leon Draisaitl?

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We are not here to discuss whether Leon Draisaitl should have been suspended or not for his high hit on Alex Barkov during Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final between Draisaitl’s Edmonton Oilers and Barkov’s Panthers.

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We are here to discuss the fact he wasn’t suspended and what that once again reminds us about the NHL. This is a league that just can’t get out of its own way.

It says one thing — head injuries must be avoided — but turns around and says, “Well, maybe not on this one.”

Whether Draisaitl meant to take out Barkov as he did, striking him in the head while leaving his feet, is irrelevant. The act happened.

On past precedence, an act like that has often led to a suspension. For whatever reason, this one didn’t.

In general, when they’re reviewing plays to determine if a hit merits a hearing and possible suspension, they follow a handful of criteria:

• The league makes it clear that players are responsible for the consequences of their actions, so what was the nature of the conduct in question? Was the act under review in violation of the rules? Was it intentional or reckless? Was there excessive or unnecessary force?

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• Did the fouled player suffer an injury?

• Has the player who committed the foul been suspended before? If a player has been suspended in the previous 18 months, they are considered a repeat offender and are likely to face a heavier suspension than if it was the first time (or they haven’t been suspended in the last 18 months, anyway).

• What was happening in the game when the incident occurred? Is it late in the game? Is the score lopsided? Did something happen in the game before the incident occurred, either immediately or earlier in the game?

• Any other factors that might be necessary to assess the incident.

Draisaitl was assessed a two-minute minor on the play. The referees on the ice felt he’d broken the rules, but only so much. Given the lack of action from the department of player safety, one can infer they felt this was enough discipline for the act.

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When the NHL does levy supplemental discipline, they release an explainer video. As you watch Draisaitl leave his feet to deliver the hit and then make contact mainly with Barkov’s head, you can hear the narrator’s voice in the video say, “This is not a hockey play.”

Except, there wasn’t a video. The NHL has just carried on.

And you’re left to wonder that were this another player hitting Barkov, would they have been disciplined?

In 2019, the Blues’ Ivan Barbashev was suspended for one game in the final for clipping the Bruins’ Marcus Johansson in the head.

In their ruling, the NHL called’s Barbashev’s hit on Johnasson, just after the Bruins forward had released a shot, “a high, forceful hit that makes Johansson’s head the main point of contact, on a hit where such head contact was avoidable. This is an illegal check to the head.”

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It’s hard to see how Draisaitl’s reckless hit was any different. Even if hitting Barkov in the head was accidental, it was reckless. He certainly didn’t have to jump the way he did, an obvious violation of the rules, as Elias Pettersson can now attest to.

But, again, this is the NHL, where one foul can apparently be unlike any other, but also like so many others.

Canucks fans aren’t wrong to point at Carson Soucy’s suspension against the Oilers for cross-checking Connor McDavid in the chin, a play that was roundly understood to be an accident, even if it was reckless, and wonder why Draisaitl isn’t being held to similar account.

The only real reasoning we can see is Soucy used his stick: As other commentators have pointed out, for whatever reason, when it comes to hitting opponents in the head with your stick — cross-checks, as opposed to random high sticks — the NHL has been pretty consistent in handing out suspensions when these acts happen away from the play.

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Before Soucy’s ban, there had been eight other plays over the previous three seasons involving cross-checks to an opponent’s head or head area that drew a suspension.

But checking an opponent in the head has proven to be more of an erratic story.

The NHL should be better at this. But they aren’t.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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