Duhatschek: Was Joe Pavelski a victim of a dirty hit?

Publish date: 2024-06-04

It didn’t take long — only until the second period of the third game of the first night of NHL playoff competition — to get our first officiating controversy of the postseason; and this is an unfortunate fact of NHL life.

Night after night, there are gray areas. In a game played at hyper speed, in a body contact sport, players get hurt. It isn’t always because of a dirty hit or play — though you’d be hard-pressed to sell that to fans of the Dallas Stars after they lost forward Joe Pavelski to injury in the midst of a pitched physical battle against the Minnesota Wild on Monday night. Pavelski was on the crushing end of a hard hit from the Wild’s Matt Dumba.

Hustling down the left side, Pavelski had just shoveled a backhander behind the net as Dumba lined him up. In hockey parlance, that’s known as finishing your check. Complicating matters, the stick of the Wild’s Ryan Hartman appeared to come up into Pavelski’s face; and as Pavelski fell, his head hit the ice and he lay there crumpled for a few seconds before gingerly getting back to his feet.

From there, chaos predictably ensued.

Now, in the past, the refereeing crew would have had to make a penalty call in real time and then live with its decision. However, the NHL introduced a rule change a few years back that permitted the referees to call a major penalty on the play, which would then give them a chance to review the play on video to dissect and determine exactly what happened.

The irony is the rule change was introduced, largely because of another play involving Pavelski years before — when he was concussed in a 2019 playoff series between his former team, the San Jose Sharks, and the Vegas Golden Knights.

After the review, Dumba was essentially exonerated. The major penalty was rescinded, and Dumba received only a minor for the melee that ensued. And to add insult to the Dallas injury, the Stars’ Max Domi was tagged with a minor and a misconduct in the resulting scrum, which meant the Stars didn’t even get a power play out of the exchange.

Pavelski had to be helped to the dressing room; he looked wobbly as he headed off. The Dallas crowd was enraged; Minnesota coach Dean Evason stated in an on-the-bench interview with Leah Hextall that the correct call had been made … and then they played on. The game eventually went to overtime.

In the meantime, Twitter erupted, and the play predictably divided the respective fan bases.

Who was right?

Well, according to ESPN analyst P.K. Subban, it was the referees.

Subban, a long-time NHL defenseman, said: “You hate to see players get hurt, but this is a part of the game. It could happen at any moment in time. Things happen so quickly out there. But I can tell you, as a defenseman, physicality — when the puck’s there and the play’s made — you’re told to finish your hit. Dumba goes in there; he doesn’t have a history of being a dirty player, but he does have a history of finishing his check — and he finishes his check. It’s just an unfortunate situation.”

Subban was joined on the panel by Chris Chelios, who had 2,892 penalty minutes in 1,651 career regular-season games and saw it mostly the same way: That it wasn’t a dirty hit; and that the biggest problem was that Pavelski didn’t see Dumba coming because another player — Hartman — had crossed in front of him.

“He just wasn’t expecting the hit — and it’s playoff hockey,” Chelios said. And Mark Messier noted that by the time Pavelski saw Dumba coming, he didn’t have time to protect himself. Messier, of course, was one of the most feared hitters in the game. I once saw him knock three Calgary Flames players out of a single game in a playoff series in 1984, just before the Edmonton Oilers won the Stanley Cup. Back then, it was open season on unsuspecting players once the playoffs started. Headhunting was not just tolerated, it was encouraged.

It’s a different game nowadays, and the NHL is clearly trying to walk that fine line between making the game safer for players, without completely eliminating one of hockey’s essential truths — that one of the few ways to legitimately gain possession of the puck is to bodycheck it away from an opponent.

Which is not exactly what Dumba did. The puck had left Pavelski’s stick a split second before. Currently, that’s the judgment call referees have to make. How late is too late? If it’s just a split second, referees generally give the player the benefit of the doubt. Or as Subban put it: “That’s Dumba’s job — you gotta finish hits. You gotta play the game physically. I did it my whole career, especially in the playoffs. Anybody coming across the blue line, you want to make body contact — cleanly. But you want to impose your will.”

It wasn’t long before Minnesota tied the game on a goal by Sam Steel — and then it settled down into a hard slog that spilled into overtime. But it was clear that the entire complexion of the series might have changed in a flash. Dallas isn’t deep; and Pavelski is a rare talent, with an uncanny ability to tip pucks in front of the net. He’ll be missed, however long he’s out.

(Photo: Tom Pennington / Getty Images)

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Duhatschek: Was Joe Pavelski a victim of a dirty hit?