If Reaves returns before Nurse, will five-game suspension fit the crime?
With Ryan Reaves suspended five games while Darnell Nurse is out indefinitely, it remains to be seen whether the ban is worthy of the hit, writes Sportsnet’s Luke Fox.
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TORONTO – A few hours before the NHL’s department of player safety began reviewing Ryan Reaves’ violent hit to the head of Darnell Nurse for supplemental discipline, something else happened on a busy Saturday.
Tanner Jeannot scored the winning goal for the L.A. Kings in a victory over the Detroit Red Wings.
What does one have to do with the other?
Well, Jeannot was making his return to the lineup after serving a three-game suspension for his dangerous headshot on Brock Boeser. The injured Boeser, a star for the Vancouver Canucks, is still out indefinitely.
Reaves was given five games Sunday.
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No matter how much you agree or disagree with Reaves’ teammates on the Toronto Maple Leafs over the checker’s intent, the result was ugly and the extra punishment necessary if the league is to minimize illegal hits to the head.
“It’s an unfortunate situation. Getting to know Reavo, it’s definitely not his intention to hurt anybody,” Matthew Knies said
Added Bobby McMann: “Guys are playing hard. I don’t think he was trying to finish high like that. I know he wasn’t. He’s just playing hard, trying to get through guys, trying to win a hockey game. Sometimes, you clip a guy the wrong way.”
Catch is, it is the hitter’s responsibility to not clip a guy as wrong as Reaves or Jeannot did this month. To not smash an opponent directly in the head, ending his night and placing him on injured reserve.
Reaves tries to adhere to a code of a hard-but-honest game. (He has a distaste for fighting unwilling opponents, for example.) Surely, he knew quickly he was at fault. And as much as we like our hockey aggressive, no one wishes to see a big man like Nurse bloodied, down on the ice for minutes, and needing two men to help him off the ice for medical attention.
Which is why Reaves didn’t dispute the match penalty and reportedly walked to the Scotiabank Arena visitors’ room to apologize in-person. And why no one on either team defended the action or disputed the immediate punishment (a five-minute major plus a match penalty).
While the most vehement Reaves apologist might argue for Nurse, the puck carrier, to lift his head and take a peek, no one can argue that Reaves should not have drilled his opponent’s shoulder instead — that finishing high was “dangerous,” as Ryan Nugent-Hopkins put it.
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“You never like to see that. You really don’t,” Toronto’s Mitch Marner said of Nurse.
“Hope everything is OK with him and speedy recovery.”
The hit checked all the boxes for George Parros to dish out the maximum five unpaid games ($35,156.25, in Reaves’ case) for a phone hearing:
• Nurse’s head was the main point of contact.
• Reaves had time to avoid Nurse’s head.
• Reaves has a history of being called to the mat, having previously been suspended thrice and fined twice.
• And Nurse was injured on the play. (With the Oilers off Sunday, we don’t yet know his timeline.)
“If Reaves wants to deliver this check, he must take an angle of approach that hits through Nurse’s shoulder and core, rather than one that picks the head,” the league explained in its suspension video.
An in-person hearing would have given Parros the option of a suspension exceeding five games; it would also give the Maple Leafs an option to appeal, which they did (unsuccessfully) in Morgan Rielly’s controversial case last season.
Feeling they were done an injustice by the Rielly ban, the Maple Leafs turned that suspension into a rallying point in 2023-24, reeling off wins in their star defenceman’s absence.
This one is different.
Nurse did nothing to provoke Reaves, and the 37-year-old’s in-game impact is minimized by his fourth-line role. Reaves has one assist and no fights through 16 games.
Reaves’ lineup spot between now and Dec. 4, when he’s eligible to return against Nashville, can go to either the next man up (currently Marlies callup Alex Steeves) or a healthy Auston Matthews.
Which brings us back to Jeannot-Boeser.
In both cases, the punished aggressor could conceivably miss fewer games than the injured target. Also in both cases, the injured player is more valuable to his team’s success.
Boeser is a 40-goal man. Nurse is Edmonton’s No. 3 defenceman.
What’s difficult to digest — or explain to the casual fan the NHL is so keen to attract — is that Reaves was banned 40 per cent longer than Jeannot for a similar headshot.
Sure, player safety can justify its rulings according to its own set of predetermined factors.
But can the sport justify the optics of letting similarly dangerous hits yield different punishments?
Or explain to fans how a player who injured another is free to score game-winners while his target isn’t ready to lace up skates?
