Canucks’ Soucy made his own bed with a non-hockey play in crosscheck on McDavid

If you’re a passionate, glass-bangin’, face-paintin’ maniac of a hockey fan, your blood runs hot during the Stanley Cup playoffs. It’s part of the experience. You feel every perceived slight against your club. That potential slew-foot by your team’s player was just a puck battle gone wrong, right? Yet that butt end from the opposing team’s player warrants criminal charges. The reactions are always extreme, the fan bases always partisan.

And that’s a big reason why the NHL’s Department of Player Safety draws the ire of fans at this time of year even more than during the regular season. There’s a perceived inconsistency between one foul and another, between two plays that look similar when only one earns supplemental discipline, between intent with no consequences and accidental plays with consequences. Sam Bennett sneaks a punch on Brad Marchand mid-hit and gets no supplemental discipline. Jacob Trouba launches himself at Martin Necas like a cruise missile, doesn’t connect and gets no discipline. Yet after Sunday’s Game 3 between the Edmonton Oilers and Vancouver Canucks, burly Vancouver blueliners Nikita Zadorov and Carson Soucy went tag-team lumberjack on Oilers superstar Connor McDavid:

McDavid with the slash and Zadorov tells him whats up with the cross check #Canucks pic.twitter.com/yQJjcEljdb

— Tedd Buddwell 🏀🏈 (@TedBuddy8) May 13, 2024

Zadorov received a $5,000 fine for cross-checking, while Soucy will have a hearing with the DOPS over the phone, meaning he stares down a (playoff weighted) suspension of five games or fewer.

Note that I said the play happened after the game, not during it. Therein lies the key clue to understanding the DOPS’ decision-making, which is surely a topic of interest for incensed Canuck fans not understanding why the search light has landed on their club. The crosscheck sandwich occurred following the final whistle of Game 3. Technically, the night of hockey was complete, the Canucks’ 4-3 victory sealed. The attacks on McDavid were thus non-hockey plays, and NHL senior vice-president of player safety George Parros has made it his mission to eliminate those plays in particular pretty much from the moment he took over the job from Stephane Quintal in 2017.

Did McDavid also catch Soucy with a slash on the hip first, escalating the fracas? Yes, he did. But McDavid’s blow wasn’t all that forceful; it was enough to warrant a penalty if the game was still going, but nothing more. The DOPS absolutely does operate in degrees of force when it comes to illegal blows, to be clear. And Soucy returned the identical slash before the crosscheck anyway, so Canucks fans don’t have a leg to stand on there, sorry.

One could definitely argue Soucy did not intend to crosscheck McDavid in the throat, and that it only played out that way as a result of Zadorov’s crosscheck from behind, which shoved McDavid’s head forward and into Soucy’s lumber. But Soucy was still attempting a forceful cross-check to some part of McDavid’s upper torso…after the game was over. If you decide to engage in rough stuff after the play is dead, you’re making your own bed.

Say what you want about the DOPS’ consistency. You don’t have to like any of it. But when players dish out violence, the lowest-hanging fruits to punish are the plays that happen when the game isn’t being played. Soucy has no one to blame but himself for that.

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