The Trouble with Jacob Trouba
His hit on Timo Meier was legal, but should it be?
The New Jersey Devils sent the New York Rangers home from the Stanley Cup Playoffs last night with a 4-0 win in Game Seven of their opening round playoff series. Unfortunately for New Jersey winger Timo Meier, he didn’t escape the rink before New York’s Jacob Trouba delivered one of his patented open ice hits that knocked Meier flat on the ice.
According to a strict reading of the NHL rules, the hit was clean. Trouba led with his shoulder, kept his elbow tucked and remained on his skates even though his shoulder clearly impacted Meier directly in the head. And as all of us who grew up playing the game know, you always need to keep your head “on a swivel” to avoid getting your bell rung, something Meier neglected to do as he entered New York’s defensive zone.
That presents an interesting philosophical contrast in how the game is officiated. When it comes to your stick, you are always responsible for what happens, even if contact is caused accidentally and the punishment for the high sticking penalty can vary based on the severity of the injury that’s suffered. But when you step on the ice, the paradigm seems to be one of “assumed risk” when it comes to hits to the head. It’s getting harder for me to reconcile the two ideas.
As soon as Trouba leveled Meier, I took to my favored messaging app to consult a friend to see what he thought of a hit whose outcome turned my stomach. He reminded me that Trouba’s check looked an awful lot like one that New Jersey’s Scott Stevens delivered to Anaheim’s Paul Kariya in the 2003 Stanley Cup Finals.
This collision has gone down in history, not just for its violence, but because Kariya pulled himself up off the ice and returned to the game in overtime to score the game winning goal. But while the announcers at the time praised Kariya’s toughness, six concussions left him with lingering effects that shortened his career and continue to plague his life off the ice years after his retirement.
As far as Kariya is concerned, Stevens’ hit was late and dirty, and was so severe that he doesn’t remember anything after it happened, including the game winning goal he scored in overtime that night in 2003. Stevens has no regrets, saying the hit was clean and that if anything, he let up a little bit before leveling Kariya.
So what’s the solution? I hate to punt here, but I can see both sides. Eliminating hard hits like these could fundamentally change the way the game of hockey is played, especially in the playoffs. Yet over time our culture evolves and so do the games we play. Let’s go back back to the 2002 Stanley Cup Playoffs when Toronto’s Darcy Tucker delivered a low hit to New York’s Michael Peca that took him out of the series. He wouldn’t return to the ice until well into the following regular season. Many observers agree with me that Peca wasn’t the same player after this hit.
In that moment on the ice, the hit was legal. But in the offseason, the NHL created a new penalty for clipping and shared the video of this hit as an example.
Are the vicarious thrills we experience when we see hits like these worth the permanent disability so many athletes suffer from when they leave the ice for the last time? And are the riches they earn over those comparatively brief careers worth the decades ahead when they’ll have to cope with the damage?
I’m afraid I don’t know the answer. But I do know this: I won’t stop watching.
The first round of the playoffs is over, and we’re hardly going to have an opportunity to breathe before the second round starts tonight in Toronto and Dallas. I’d personally like to thanks the Florida Panthers for not only blowing up my entire playoff bracket, but also for reminding us that while we think we know this game, we really know a lot less than we want to admit.
Taking a peek at the board at the Off Wing Stanley Cup Challenge, only a handful of entries remain active after a first round that saw both the President’s Trophy winner (Boston) and the defending Stanley Cup champion (Colorado) sent packing.
Hats off to the survivors:
John McErlain and Howard Feinberg: Toronto Maple Leafs
Marc Masferrer: Dallas Stars
Todd Goren: Seattle Kraken
William F. Yurasko: NJ Devils
As for who I favor now that Boston has departed, I’m looking out West to the Dallas Stars. Jake Oettinger is the best goalie left in the tournament. As great as Seattle played in the first round, they’re going to have a much tougher time solving Oettinger. At the other end of the draw, I have to envy hockey fans living on the West Coast, because they’re the only ones who are going to be able to stay up late enough to watch Vegas and Edmonton. Give me the Oilers and an oxygen tank.
In the East, we have another track meet set up as New Jersey meets Carolina. I have to admit I didn’t watch very much of New Jersey this season, but I couldn’t help but be wowed by the way they played the Rangers after dropping the opening two games of that series on home ice. They’re very good and will give Carolina fits. The Devils are going to be very good for a very long time. They’re arriving early, but give me NJ.
As for Toronto-Florida, I can’t help but feel a little sad that we’re not going to see an Original Six tangle between the Leafs and the Bruins in the second round. But the Panthers had something to say about that. And one year after they won the President’s Trophy only to get swept in the second round by eventual Eastern Conference champ Tampa Bay, they’re back and looking a lot more resilient than they did 12 months ago. At the end of the season, as the Panthers limped into the playoffs as the final Wild Card, the trade that brought Matthew Tkachuk to Florida was looking suspect. One series later, it’s looking brilliant. He seems to be the leader they needed. But while they’re tougher than a year ago, I think they’ll still fall to Toronto in six.
That’s might be what I think, but now that we all know what we don’t know, we understand what these predictions are actually worth. I guess you’ll just have to watch.
Eric McErlain lives and works in the Washington, D.C. area. He blogged at Off Wing Opinion regularly from 2002-2009. In addition to writing at Off Wing, his work has appeared at The Sporting News, AOL FanHouse, NBC Sports.com, Deadspin, The Hockey Writers, Pro Football Weekly and The Washington Post. In 1993, he wrote one of the first columns in a daily newspaper covering fantasy football for The Washington Times.