This in the form the NHL Department of Player Safety: “Toronto’s Ryan Reaves has been suspended for five games for an illegal check to the head against Edmonton’s Darnell Nurse.”
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NHL player safety called it an illegal check to the head. “The head is clearly the main point of contact, as Reaves’ shoulder makes direct and forceful contact with Nurse’s head, and it is the head that absorbs the vast majority of the force. The head contact on this check is avoidable. Reaves mistimes this play, choosing an angle of approach that cuts across the front of Nurse, missing his core and making his head the main point of contact.”
My take
1. Ryan Reaves gets small penalty for headhunting Darnell Nurse but how terrible a price for Edmonton Oilers? That’s not yet known. There were hopeful signals out of the Oilers camp that Nurse was seen joking with trainers after the hit, but it’s not known how much weight we can put in that.
2. Why do I saw a small penalty for Reaves? He only plays 7:51 per game. He’s a marginal player on the Toronto roster, but his spot on the team so long as they have an old school coach like Craig Berube who values this kind of menacing player on his roster. Reaves can relax, knowing he’ll still have a job when he gets back. At the same time, it’s arguable that Toronto will be any worse off without him, given his limited impact as a two-way hockey player. He’s got one assist in 16 games.
3. The impact of the hit, which bloodied Nurse’s face, has yet to be described in full by the Oilers. If Nurse is out for weeks, months,or longer, that will have a huge and negative impact on the team, especially given how well Nurse has played in November. He was skating as well as ever, evidently having shaken off whatever injuries were ailing him in the 2024 playoffs, and playing his ‘A’ game. In the past two weeks, he’d been Edmonton’s best d-man.
4. Was five games enough for Reaves? Two things can be true at once about the hit? First, in a contact sport like hockey, Nurse would have done well to have had his head up and thus avoided the freight train. Second, the hit broke numerous rules, in that Reaves was charging, he targeted the head or was reckless in avoiding it, thus making this play a deliberate attempt to injure. Ten or 20 games might have got Reaves’ attention, but not five. He’ll be back in without much consequence to him.
5. There’s no shortage of controversy around Evan Bouchard just now, especially given his turnover on Toronto’s second goal and his poor recovery on Toronto’s third goal. Both were egregious mistakes by Bouchard, but context is necessary in judging the player.
If we look at the two charts in this post, we see that when it comes to making major mistakes on Grade A shots against at even strength, Bouchard has the highest rate of any Oilers d-man other than sub Travis Dermott, 1.72 mistakes on Grade A shots per 15 minutes of even strength ice time, but that puts Bouchard in the same range as Mattias Ekholm, 1.61 per 15 and Nurse, 1.67 per 15.
All three of Bouchard, Nurse and Ekholm play heavy minutes against tough competition. It would be great if they were around 1.0 mistakes per 15, the kind of number we saw from Adam Larsson and Kris Russell in their defensive primes, but not to be.
If all of Bouchard, Ekholm and Nurse can get those mistakes down to fewer than 1.5 per 15 minutes, that will be sufficient, an indication they are holding their own against tough comp. Last year Bouchard was at 1.48 per 15, Ekholm 1.43 per 15, and Nurse at an unacceptable 1.83 per 15.
6. The sample size for major mistakes on goals against is much smaller this year, too small to put much weight in it, but we see that when it comes to making major mistakes on goals, Ekholm, Brett Kulak and Bouchard are all in the same range, with Nurse doing somewhat better. But it’s too early to see these rate differences as hugely significant.
At the Cult of Hockey
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