Everyone remembers the Winter Classic in 2011 not because of the outcome or the event, but because the game’s best player, Sidney Crosby, was caught with a blindside hit from David Steckel.
That hit, combined with Victor Hedman’s check from behind on Crosby a few nights later, gave the Penguins captain a concussion that knocked him out of the game for 11 months. And shortly after he returned in November of 2011, the symptoms came back, limiting Crosby to only 22 games in 2011-12.
While Hedman’s hit seemed avoidable, Steckel’s looked accidental. The then-Washington Capitals forward was skating up the ice as Crosby turned into his path and in line with his shoulder. The result was terrible, but the act was not malicious.
On Friday, Crosby was on the opposite end of a hit that was very similar to the one Steckel threw on him almost four years ago. Sure, Crosby wasn’t skating up ice as Steckel was, but he was skating in a straight line as the other player curled into his path.
Like Steckel’s, Crosby’s hit on Riley Nash was not intentional. Crosby, obviously, is no head hunter. But it should give No. 87 pause to reflect back on the Steckel hit. Here’s what Crosby said to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review’s Rob Rossi about the Hedman and Steckel hits back on Jan. 8, 2011.
“I didn’t like them,” Crosby said. “You talk about head shots and dealing with them, and that’s been something that’s been pretty big points of interest with everybody – GMs and players. When I look at those two hits… I mean, we talk about blindside, and that’s a big word, unsuspecting player. There’s no puck there (on) both (hits) – and direct hit to the head on both of them. If you want to go through the criteria I think they fit all those.
“I know it’s a fast game and I think if anybody understands it’s a fast game – I’ve been hit a thousand times – but when you get hit like that there’s nothing you can do, there’s no way you can protect yourself. Those are things that hopefully (the NHL) pays more attention to. It’s easy to say that being in this situation, but those two hits – looking back I can’t say I should have done something different or had my head down. I wouldn’t change anything.”
“On the Steckel one it’s tough,” he said. “It’s really tough to decide whether he meant to or didn’t mean to. I felt like he could have got out of the way or avoid me. Whether he tried to hurt me only he knows. I guess we’ll never know that. You still have to be responsible out there. I can carry my stick up around my head and say I’m protecting myself, but I’ve still got to stay responsible out there with whatever I do with my stick, if I end up high-sticking someone. It’s the same thing. In that situation I don’t see anything – he sees me there, he sees the whole ice, and he doesn’t avoid me, so I don’t think that’s responsible on his part. Whether or not he tried to hurt me only he knows that, but he’s got to be the one to try avoid me in that situation.”
If the onus was on Steckel in 2011, who was the onus on Friday night?
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Hockey is an inherently rough game and though we can easily pick out the dirty players, the head hunters and the one-dimensional goons – and, frankly, love to do it – there is still a big grey area when it comes to accidental hits like these. Trying to define every incident in black and white terms is a fool’s game.
Penalizing and suspending direct and, especially, intentional hits to the head to eradicate them from the game is a noble goal and it’s one the NHL has made great strides towards in the past four years. But we’ll always still end up with incidental contact like this from time to time.
It can happen to players like Steckel; it can happen to players like Crosby.
Only, when it happens to someone like Steckel, the immediate popular reaction is to call him a goon and demand action from the league. When it happens to Crosby, the calls of defense scream louder.
But, on this play, Steckel and Crosby are on the same level. We can reflect on the unfortunate hit from that Winter Classic in 2011 and perhaps better understand what happened on the Steckel play. Was it intentional, or was it a result of the quickness of the game? Should Steckel have been called to the NHL’s court regardless of an intent we can’t possibly measure? How would you answer those same questions about Crosby’s hit on Nash?
If Crosby, the most skilled player in the world, couldn’t avoid something like this, how could a player of Steckel’s ability?
Not every bad hit is thrown with malicious intent. We were reminded of that reality of the game on Friday.
