TORONTO — It took only moments on this Saturday night, underneath the Scotiabank Arena lights, for you to get the sense this one was going to be a rollercoaster.
A few early hints of Connor McDavid’s patented offensive wizardry made that clear, the 1,000-point man darting and wheeling around the Toronto Maple Leafs’ cage with vigour, waiting to pounce. Twenty-two minutes into the tilt, his Edmonton Oilers seemed on track for a celebratory trip to their next leg of this eastern swing, McDavid’s club having built up a 2-1 lead, having just cashed in early in the second period with a power-play marker from No. 97 himself.
Then Darnell Nurse picked up the puck behind his own net, wheeled around the cage to take off up ice, and was stopped in his tracks by a brutal collision, Ryan Reaves catching the defender with a shoulder to the head.
The Oilers rearguard was sent to the ice. He remained there, clearly in pain, for some time, the sheet speckled with blood.
Hours later, after the tumultuous evening had finished as a 4-3 overtime victory for the home side, Oilers veteran Ryan Nugent-Hopkins made his feelings on the sequence clear.
“I think it’s a dangerous play. He’s got to know that Nursey doesn’t see him coming and choose the right path there. And he doesn’t,” Nugent-Hopkins said from the visitors’ locker room late Saturday. “I mean, it’s tough to see one of your teammates on the ice like that. Dangerous play. You don’t ever want to see something like that.”
Reaves was handed a match penalty for the hit and tossed from the game. Whether further supplemental discipline is coming from the league’s department of player safety remains to be seen.
“I don’t know. They’ll deal with it,” Nugent-Hopkins said of the punishment deserved for such a play. “The call on the ice, that was the right call obviously. But, I don’t know — they should take a good hard look, for sure.”
While in the wake of the play, some pointed to the fact that Nurse did himself no favours by rounding the net with his head down as Reaves approached, there’s little question the Maple Leafs winger’s decision was a reckless one, at the very least.
“We’re professional athletes. We’re able to make those decisions quick, I think, in our heads. You know when a guy’s vulnerable or in a bad spot,” Oilers pivot Adam Henrique said of the play. “So, just one you don’t want to see.”
Asked about the hit post-game, Maple Leafs head coach Craig Berube refused to comment, saying he hadn’t yet seen the replay. On the other side of the hall, Oilers bench boss Kris Knoblauch didn’t mince words.
“It was contact to the head,” Knoblauch said. “I did see it, and that’s what I saw.”
After being tended to by the team’s medical staff, Nurse was eventually able to get to his feet and skate off the ice, the veteran helped to the tunnel by teammate Mattias Janmark. Still, there’s no doubt it was a jarring sight for the teammates watching from the bench, seeing the Oilers mainstay down and bloodied.
“It’s hard. You never want to see that, you never want to see bad hits to the head. So, it was tough,” Henrique said of the emotional impact of that moment on the group. “We all know that the game is fast, and things happen quick. But you never want to see that.”
“Obviously there’s concern about our teammate,” Knoblauch added. “You’re worried about his well-being. We’re still concerned.”
In the other locker room, after the final buzzer had sounded, the authors of the home side’s comeback win defended their teammate.
“I mean, it’s an unfortunate situation. Getting to know Reavo, it’s definitely not his intention to hurt anybody,” said young Matthew Knies of the collision. “Plays like that happen — you know, it happened with me in Washington. It’s unfortunate, and you hope he’s okay.”
“That’s the side of the game that you never want to see,” 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.
“It was nice to see him get up and skate off there. It’s not nice to see, but hopefully he’s doing alright.”
That the night only seemed to continue slipping away from the Oilers from that moment on likely added to the visitors’ frustration. Navigating Nurse’s absence, the Oilers carried a 2-1 lead into the third period, only to see it evaporate in a chaotic, one-minute stretch that saw a pair of Edmonton mistakes spur game-tilting goals from Knies and McMann.
Leon Draisaitl managed to get one back in the final minutes of the frame, sending the game to overtime. But in the end, the Oilers leave town having to settle for a single point, Mitch Marner having played hometown hero with an unassisted game-winner to end the tilt.
There will be film to watch, errors to dissect, corrections to make. For now, though, the Oilers’ focus is on the well-being of No. 25.
“We all checked in on him. He’s a tough customer, so I think he probably plays it off a little more than he’s feeling,” Nugent-Hopkins said of how Nurse was faring when they saw him after the game. “Already you could kind of tell his eye was swelling up a little bit. But he seemed alright. … Obviously, we’re hoping for the best.”
A game in Montreal on Monday comes next. Before then, the Oilers will await further word on whether they’ll have to navigate a continued absence from Nurse, one that would be particularly ill-timed given the blue-liner’s form of late.
“He’s huge to our group, on the ice and off the ice,” Nugent-Hopkins said of the club’s long-time blue-line pillar. “He’s been here for a long time, 10-plus years. You never want to see anybody on your team, no matter what, get hit like that and go down. But of course, Nursey’s such a huge part of our group, so we obviously feel it.”
“He’s a very important piece of our team,” Knoblauch added. “Especially how well he had been playing this last week or two. Fortunately, we had seven defencemen dressed tonight and those guys really stepped up, guys who aren’t playing usually — (Troy) Stecher, (Travis) Dermott, (Ty) Emberson.
“Those guys stepped up in his absence. But you can’t replace Darnell.”
