Game Day 25: Oilers vs Vegas
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Toronto Maple Leafs tough guy Ryan Reaves has served his five game suspension for blasting Edmonton’s Darnell Nurse with a brutal shoulder to the head, and is now back in fighting spirting, ready to throw more hard hits, including the odd verbal one evidently.
Reaves fired back at Nurse for comments the ace Edmonton Oilers d-man made about the head shot. Nurse took some responsibility for getting hit but strongly implied a week ago that Reaves’ and other like him are off-side: “In situations like that there’s definitely an onus on the player with the puck to be aware of where everyone else in on the ice,” he said of his own responsibility. “For sure. With that said, even if you put yourself in a bad spot there’s lots of body on a 6-foot, 4-inch player (Nurse’s height) to hit and not one piece was touched other than my head. You can argue about the intent, but there’s certain guys in the league that each shift they go out there and try and go and inflict pain and I think it’s pretty obvious what was going on there….It is what it is. For me, move on and get ready for coming back to keep the momentum going that was going before that.”
Today Reaves shot back that, yes, he’s all about inflicting pain, but not the kind of pain he levelled against Nurse with the head shot.
He said the head shot was a case of bad aiming and timing on his part: “Just took a couple inch too bad of an angle and caught him. Just an unfortunate, unfortunate incident. If I’m a second later, you know, I catch body. Obviously something you don’t want to see, but just split second too late or too early.”
Asked about the suspension, Reaves said, “I don’t want to get into that. I already told the kids that Christmas is canceled. I don’t want to get fined again.”
When asked about Nurse’s comments, Reaves said, “When you get caught by somebody, then you’re entitled to your opinion. That’s fine, but I think my 900 games, and however many thousands of hits I have speaks for itself. I play physical every game, and doing it for 15 years, and I’ve only had a couple suspensions. The only truth that he spoke was, you know, I go out there to inflict pain. That’s a fact, and that’s not going to stop. But I’m going to continue to do it legally. I’m going to keep playing hard, if not harder, now, and keep burying guys.”
Reaves added: “I try and play within the rules of the game. So when something like that happens and a hit gets away from you, I don’t want to see anybody, you know, laying on the ice with a head injury, obviously.”
My take
1. It was a brutal and illegal hit. Reaves was lucky to get only five games. Nurse was right to take some responsibility for getting hit, but also correct in blasting Reaves for such a head shot. Reaves? Reaves’ job is indeed to hit and hit hard. It’s how he’s made a great living in the NHL for more than a decade. Why would he continue to do anything than what he’s done before?
2. The bottom line in all this from an Oilers perspective is that while Nurse got clobbered, it didn’t impact his play. After a rancid start to the season, he was playing excellent hockey in the seven games before he got hit and he’s continued to play excellent two-way hockey in the four games since he’s returned to the line-up. That’s a relief given how serious that bloodbath blow to the head looked.
3. We can see Nurse’s improved play in his Grade A shots plus-minus at even strength. His rate of contribution to Grade A shots has shot up compared to the first ten games, and his rate of mistakes on Grade A shots against has shot down.
This makes Nurse the latest Oilers d-man to start to excel under Paul Coffey, something we saw in almost every d-man under Coffey last year, except for Nurse himself. But we’re seeing it now and the improvement has been dramatic. Nurse has easily been the Oil’s best d-man in the last month.
4. No changes to the Oil line-up tonight with Viktor Arvidsson, Evander Kane, and Zach Hyman all still out, and the lines and pairings the same as we saw in Edmonton’s big win over the Avs.
RNH-MvDavid-Kapanen
Podkolzin-Draisaitl-Brown
Skinner-Henrique-Janmark
Caggiula-Ryan-Perry
Ekholm-Bouchard
Nurse-Stecher
Kulak-Emberson
Skinner Pickard S
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