Hyman takes his toughness factor to illegal extreme
A weekend of discussing the toughness factor of the Toronto Maple Leafs ended with Zach Hyman suspended two games for Saturday night’s hit on Boston Bruins’ defenceman Charlie McAvoy.
Toronto will certainly miss its valued puck pursuit winger on the line with John Tavares and Mitch Marner after the NHL’s department of player safety held a hearing Sunday afternoon. The incident came late in a 6-3 loss on Saturday night in Boston.
After McAvoy had got rid of the puck from behind his own net and was focused on where the puck was headed, Hyman decided to plant his left shoulder into his upper chest, knocking him to the ice. Compounding the concern was McAvoy had just come back from seven weeks away with a concussion. Hyman received a major for interference and a game misconduct on the play.
The league noted “a dangerous, forceful, high hit” into the boards, adding the “predatory nature” of the check warranted supplemental discipline. The league took Hyman’s clean record in 210 NHL games into account, but he’ll still lose US$24,193.54 in salary and miss Tuesday’s game in Carolina and Thursday’s battle for first in the conference with Tampa Bay.
The Leafs had hoped that Chris Wagner’s hit on Leafs’ defenceman Morgan Rielly in apparent retaliation of the Hyman hit would warrant a look. Wagner received two for charging, a major for fighting Ron Hainsey, who’d come to Rielly’s defence and a 10-minute misconduct on the play.
THROWING DOWN THE GAUNTLET
Coach Mike Babcock had spent part of Saturday morning outlining once more how he’d prefer team toughness to be manifested through protecting the puck down low, being hungry on the forecheck and positionally sound, all designed to break the opponent’s will or draw costly penalties.
That plan went south on Saturday and the Leafs know they must do a better job the next time there’s a fierce turf war with a big foe bent on shutting down the faster Leafs with physicality.
“That’s hockey, so that’s our job to respond to that,” said Auston Matthews. “Boston made a push and we didn’t respond. You go into the second period down 1-0 on the road, it’s not the worst position to be in. Then we just started taking penalties (four in all). They started out-working us big time and we weren’t able to climb out of the hole that we dug ourselves.
“I thought the way we did battle back a little bit in the third (though) at that point it’s too late. I thought it was a good fight by (Nazem Kadri battling the bigger Brandon Carlo) to give us a wake-up call.”
Kadri said he was getting stir crazy in the middle period, forced to sit much of the time in favour of penalty killers, while Boston ran up the score. When put back out, he took exception to some cross checks and then got into it with Carlo, despite the risks.
“I’d just had enough,” Kadri said. “I obviously tried to generate a spark to get the guys going. All in all, I think it was a good fight.”
Watching from the bench after he was yanked, Leafs’ goalie Frederik Andersen observed: “I liked the way we responded and were sticking up for each other. Hopefully, it’ll be something that can tighten the group even more in the future.”
MORE B’S PLEASE
Coach Mike Babcock could manipulate the NHL schedule matrix, he’d surely have pushed the four games against Boston to the second half, not the first.
While his Leafs have obvious physical and mental blocks to overcome at TD Garden and a war of words escalated after Saturday, a wistful feeling lingered that more games against the Bruins towards spring would likely be a good playoff primer for the Leafs. Babcock was so taken by the vibe of these rivalry games — he described them as fun — that he spoke of seeing Boston twice more this season, though the series ends Jan. 12 in Toronto.
That aside, the Bruins have stoked the fire with two playoff series wins that went seven games and have 11 goals against Toronto in their two home victories this season.