Midway through Tuesday’s Game 2 between the Islanders and Lightning, Jonathan Drouin was carrying the puck into New York’s zone and committed the cardinal sin of cutting to the middle of the ice with his head down.
As you can see in the video above, Hickey crushed Drouin with the biggest hit since Dustin Byfuglien’s devastating blow on Mark Stone at the end of the regular season.
But there was contact made with Drouin’s head, so was it clean?
In a word, yes. In a few more words, here is what it says in the NHL Rulebook. Read the three considerations for when head contact is legal and you’ll see why this one should not receive supplemental discipline.:
48.1 Illegal Check to the Head – A hit resulting in contact with an opponent’s head where the head was the main point of contact and such contact to the head was avoidable is not permitted. In determining whether contact with an opponent’s head was avoidable, the circumstances of the hit including the following shall be considered:
(i) Whether the player attempted to hit squarely through the opponent’s body and the head was not “picked” as a result of poor timing, poor angle of approach, or unnecessary extension of the body upward or outward.
(ii) Whether the opponent put himself in a vulnerable position by assuming a posture that made head contact on an otherwise full body check unavoidable.
(iii) Whether the opponent materially changed the position of his body or head immediately prior to or simultaneously with the hit in a way that significantly contributed to the head contact.
In the second intermission, Sportsnet’s Nick Kypreos explained why he believes this is a clean check:
“For me it’s all about the positioning and how he was committed to a full body check. His knees are bent, his elbows are in, he’s going to start leaning with his shoulder. Those are all the things you have to do in today’s game.
“Did he make head contact? Yes he did. But we do know that once your opponent establishes a position that makes head contact unavoidable, it’s accepted. It’s fine with the league.
“This was a mean, clean hit.”
Drouin left the game after the hit and did not return until late in the third period.
UPDATE: for the record, Drouin himself thought the hit was clean:
