CHICAGO — There’s nothing normal about hockey’s norms.
This is the only team sport in which full-blown fistfights are not just condoned, they’re also romanticized, woven into the very fabric of the game. It’s a sport in which players routinely play with shattered teeth, broken fingers, bloodied faces. Clean hits are met with vicious retaliation, and empty net slap shots are met with cross-checks to the face. It’s a modern game of incredible skill, speed and athleticism, but much of its charm is found in its throwback viciousness, an inherent meanness that harks back to another era.
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So maybe it really wasn’t a big deal when the Colorado Avalanche’s Josh Manson lunged forward and hacked Connor Bedard’s wrist with a two-handed chop of his stick in the third period Thursday night. That’s hockey, right? “It’s a great play,” former Chicago Blackhawks defenseman Brent Sopel, as tough a player as they come, wrote in reply to the video on Twitter. “Big boy hockey.”
Was it, though?
What could possibly be the purpose of this slash to the wrist/hand other than intent to injure? https://t.co/5koT5YI0ZC
— Mark Lazerus (@MarkLazerus) March 1, 2024
Bedard didn’t have the puck. It was miles behind the play. It was a sneak attack from behind when Bedard wasn’t looking. And it was right on one of the most vulnerable parts of a hockey player’s body — no chance that was a coincidence — just below the glove, right on the wrist bone. Regardless of whether it was retaliation or intimidation — nobody in the Blackhawks dressing room seemed to know — there’s no possible purpose to the slash other than an intent to injure. Bedard escaped without injury, but he was doubled over in pain afterward, so you know Manson hit his spot.
This is big-boy hockey? Really? A sucker slash from behind seems more cowardly than macho, no?
Regardless of what side of The Discourse you find yourself on, it is part of the game. Always has been.
“It happens every game,” 17-year NHL veteran Nick Foligno said. “It’s just magnified because it’s (Bedard). Obviously, we don’t want anyone taking liberties on him, but it’s going to happen. It’s going to happen again. Bedsy’s going to have to learn to play through some things. Every player has. Connor McDavid had to learn to play through all the cross-checks and whacks he gets. Sid (Crosby), too. It’s the reality of the game.”
He’s right. But why do we allow it to be the reality of the game? To appeal to the old-school fans clinging to a more archaic and violent form of the sport, one that’s been gradually getting memory-holed for two decades now? There are fewer fights, there’s less clutching and grabbing, and goons who can barely skate have all but gone extinct, and the game is so much better for it. Yet the hockey world still shrugs its shoulders when it comes to protecting its players, particularly its best ones. Crime, boy, I don’t know.
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Hockey doesn’t have to be this way. Hockey doesn’t have to accept this. Hockey can be a sport that prioritizes its stars. Not enough people are tuning in as it is, but the ones who are tuning in are doing so to see the Connor Bedards of the world make magic, not the Josh Mansons of the world trying to injure guys for … reasons. Who really wants this nonsense? Who benefits from it?
Yes, this is what hockey is. But should it be?
“Is it and should it be might be different answers,” Blackhawks center Jason Dickinson said. “I mean, it is. It happens all the time. But should it? Probably not. Because guys get hurt that way and miss time. It’s not anything you want to see when it’s blatantly intentional like that. If a guy has the puck, it’s a different situation, where I’m trying to get the puck. Maybe that’s an opportunity to get an extra little bump on him or even a little whack. But whacking a guy with your stick like that in that situation is not something I’m keen on.”
If Manson was sending a “welcome to the NHL” message of intimidation with his slash, there were better — and cleaner — ways of doing it. If he was mad about something Bedard might have pulled along the boards earlier in the game, there were certainly less gutless ways of responding to it. Bedard might be hard to hit, but he’s sure as hell not hard to find.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s retaliatory or what, wait for the guy to get the puck,” Dickinson said. “A guy like Bedard, he’s going to have the puck 75 percent of his shift. That’s when he’s (fair game). Fans talk about how guys like McDavid, (Nathan) MacKinnon, (Auston) Matthews and (Nikita) Kucherov get targeted all the time, all the abuse they take. Well, they have the puck the whole time, so they’re going to get hit a little more. If I don’t get the puck, I’m never going to get hit. It’s as simple as that. Without the puck, there’s no real excuse. It’s clear you’re just taking a shot to take a shot.”
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Dickinson pointed to the way the Ottawa Senators’ Brady Tkachuk hounded him all game a couple of weeks ago.
“But he waited for me to get the puck every time,” Dickinson said. “He kept it clean.”
The lack of consequences for dirty plays like this is the most frustrating part. For his slash on the wrist, Manson wasn’t even given a slap on the wrist. Not even one of those toothless $5,000 fines the NHL is authorized to hand out by the league’s and players’ collective bargaining agreement. You’d think an illegal stick foul with intent to injure would warrant the same level of scrutiny and suspension as a high hit or Morgan Rielly’s cross-check on Ridly Greig. But there was nothing. Nothing from the league. Not even anything from the Blackhawks, who have been jumping anyone who dares lay a hit on Bedard all season.
At least the Blackhawks have an excuse. It happened so far behind the play that nobody saw it until it became part of the online conversation later that night. But as Dickinson put it, “you take mental notes.” And the Blackhawks will see the Avalanche again Monday night in Denver.
“I don’t like that play,” said Reese Johnson, one of the Blackhawks whose job it is to stick up for teammates with his body or his fists. “I don’t even know what started it. But it felt like he wanted to slash him for some reason. I just think that’s a greasy slash, to get a guy on the wrist where there’s no padding. All I’ll say is you never forget that stuff. That stuff’s just glued into your mind when you see that.”
Foligno didn’t like it, either. And he expects some kind of answer Monday, too, though he said it won’t be reckless, “eye-for-and-eye” vengeance. Dickinson, too, said he’s more likely to play the body on the forecheck over the puck once or twice Monday should Manson be in his sights.
But Foligno’s an old-school player, a hard-nosed guy who’s taken and given his share of slashes and cross-checks and can-openers. He said he gets whacked like that in front of the net “every single game.” And clearly there’s a part of him that likes hockey that way, that wants to keep it that way, like so many fans do.
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“It’s a physical game, it’s going to happen,” he said. “And it’s a fine line you walk, because I’m a big believer in standing up for your teammates. But also, if you’re policing every single hit and play, holy s—, I’m going to be running around the ice all over the place. Our whole team is. Then you’re in the box all game and you’re not focused on winning games. It’s a physical game. It’s hockey.”
Bedard, for his part, was furious after the slash, but it’s not like he went running to his big brothers on the bench to take care of the mean bully on the playground. He took it. And he surely clocked it. But he also moved on from it. This is how it’s going to be for his entire career — he’s a marked man, with a target not just on his back, but also on any exposed and easily damaged part of his body.
“At some point, it’s like, ‘All right, I got whacked, s— happens,’” Foligno said. “But you can go back at him, too. And if he does something again, then we’ll jump in, too. There’s a little bit of a game within the game. Now we obviously don’t need Bedsy worrying about that stuff, or any of our skill guys. But it’s hockey. It’s going to happen. I don’t need our team focused on just watching him and making sure he’s not getting hit. We’re not putting bubble wrap around him. And he doesn’t want that as a player. He’s an aggressive kid, too. And if you’re going to dish it, you’re going to take it, too.”
And Bedard has been dishing it out more often lately. He’s getting scrappier, more physical, maybe out of frustration, maybe out of necessity. In Saturday night’s game against the Columbus Blue Jackets, he shoved Alexander Nylander off the puck in the corner, leading directly to a Philipp Kurashev goal late in the first period. It was a smart, productive, legal hit on a guy with the puck. Nothing like all the cross-checks he takes in the crease, the elbows he absorbs along the boards or the occasional love taps he gets on the wrists from the likes of Manson.
This is just how star players live in the NHL, like it or not.
“Bedsy’s the future, he’s the present, he’s the guy,” Dickinson said. “You can’t let s— like that slide. Or else they’ll always be taking shots at him.”
If only the league, those in charge and the hockey world at large felt the same.
(Photo of Logan O’Connor and Connor Bedard: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)