A day after Florida Panthers center Sam Bennett avoided suspension for his “accidental” elbow to the head of Toronto Maple Leafs goalie Anthony Stolarz, a former NHL defenseman and department of player safety advisor went to ‘X’ and started posting about what he saw.
“Was this a blatant elbow to the back of Anthony Stolarz head? YES,” tweeted Chris Pronger. “Should it have been a penalty? YES.
“Was Bennett trying to injure Stolarz, who is a former teammate from just last year? I DON’T THINK SO.
“Was he trying to rattle Stolarz? Absolutely.”
Apparently, “trying to rattle” a goalie is not an offense worthy of a suspension. Few offenses are when it comes to goaltenders.
As much as the NHL has made attempts to try and protect what is arguably the most important position on the ice, goalies are still often free game. Or, at least, it appears that way, based on the lack of supplemental discipline involving goalies over the years.
The last time a player was suspended in the playoffs for an incident involving a goaltender was 13 years ago, when Chicago’s Andrew Shaw levelled Arizona’s Mike Smith while he was playing the puck behind the net in 2012. Compared to the Bennett’s collision with Stolarz, what Shaw did to Smith was worthy of jail time.
From a supplementary discipline, the question wasn’t whether Shaw should be suspended — but rather, how many games he should receive.
The answer was three games.
Sam Bennett, however, received zero games. Worse, he wasn’t even penalized on the play, which made Stolarz’s eventual exit from Game 1 even harder to watch for Leafs fans who could be without their No. 1 goalie for the rest of the series.
“Goaltending is the most important position. It really is,” said TSN analyst Jamie McLennan, who is also a former goalie. “And you really only notice it when you don’t have it. The nature of this is that it was the perfect storm. It wasn’t Aleksander Barkov, who has won the Lady Byng (Memorial Trophy as the league’s most gentlemanly player), doing this. It’s Sam Bennett, who has a history.”
McLennan, who is a self-described “goalie hugger,” believes goaltenders should be protected — at all costs.
Like NFL quarterbacks, goalies are unique. They are not skaters. They don’t deliver hits. And they shouldn’t receive hits. That is, as long as they remain in the safety of their crease.
And yet, what Bennett did to Stolarz wasn’t Shaw hitting Smith, or Milan Lucic running over Ryan Miller.
Bennett had the puck and he was driving to the net. He’s allowed to do that. What he’s not allowed to do is use his body recklessly, the same way that Edmonton’s Viktor Arvidsson did when he ran into Los Angeles’ Darcy Kuemper in a first-round series.
Still, McLennan agrees with Pronger that “this isn’t an epidemic.” Nor is it a black-and-white issue that deserves harsher discipline.
“I will always side on the goalie being safe,” said McLennan. “But problem is guys get pushed and shoved and accidental on purpose. You’re allowed to drive the net. But you have to have control of your body. The goalie should be afforded his crease safely. But the water gets murky when defensemen push a guy.”
The water gets even murkier when trying to determine whether it was Bennett that even caused Stolarz to leave the game. After all, Bennett wasn’t the only one who hit the goalie.
In the first period, Stolarz took a shot to the head from Sam Reinhart that knocked the Stolarz’s mask off. Was Stolarz hurt on that play? Or was it a combination of the puck and Bennett’s elbow that caused the injury?
As Pronger tweeted, “Did the incident from the 1st period make this blow to the head worse than it may have been?”
No one knows.
Complicating matters is that even after the Bennett collision, Stolarz still remained in the game and was later seen laughing with backup Joseph Woll. It wasn’t until cameras saw Stolarz vomiting on the bench, followed by reports that he had to be stretchered out of the arena to a local hospital, that the true severity of the injury was realized.
“We don’t know when it happened,” said McLennan. “It was either the snapshot to the face or the elbow to the head. If I put all the factors into it, yes, I could convince myself it was a suspension. But i don’t know.
“It certainly was a penalty. And you could have called it a major. But again, the goalie gets up and plays.”
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