Sometimes head contact is unavoidable and all we can ask is for a player to try and minimize the effect.
here’s the Nick cousins hit on Yo valaki now here’s cousins on approach and look at valaki he’s standing up at the Blue Line like a regular player would as expected cousins reaches out with a stick to play the puck actually does make contact with the puck and probably expects to collide with a player who’s still on his feet so as this play develops all of a sudden now he has a player who’s prone on his knees with his head right there and he does go through it there’s no doubt but there’s nothing here to indicate that it’s intentionally done in fact it looks like he makes evasive maneuvers if you were about to crash into someone whose head is your waist tight it makes sense that he would take that left leg and try and pull it away and turn his hips to the right and try and pull himself around without making too much contact which is what he does same thing here he realizes he’s going to crash into him so he lowers his arm and tries to kind of pull his upper body and hips to the right like that out of the way and try and sneak around but it’s too late and he goes awkwardly over top of them immediately checks to see if he’s okay again from this angle about to crash into him try and beer to the right but too much of his body weight is already shifted to his left so we can’t get it all around and an unfortunate Collision happens to me this is just unavoidable head contact to an opponent who has materially changed his body position either just prior to or simultaneously with contact and a player who is taking what looks like evasive maneuvers to minimize head contact no penalty no suspension
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Intentional hit to the head. 5 and a game. Sneak around? Get real guy
What? Rare bad take by Tough Call… he doesn't move to the right or evasively whatsoever, instead he seems to move more in to him, but even if Valimaki was on his feet, he likely turns toward the boards to try to keep the puck in the zone and it's still boarding. It's pretty inconsistent that you call out against people who say players turn their backs to the play to draw boarding, yet defend this one.
I don't think he premeditated a hit to the head of a vulnerable player. That being said, I disagree that he did everything he could to avoid contact once he saw Valimaki on his knees. If he had, you would have seen him twist his body the OPPOSITE way, so that his contact shoulder was away from the hit resulting in a glancing blow, vs what he did, which is turning his contact shoulder INTO the player, as you would when making a check. If it was anyone else who didn't have a history of dirty hits, you could give the benefit of the doubt. But Cousins is quickly becoming a hated player.
This is by far the dumbest shit I've seen this season. This happens in less than a second but when you slow it down to 0.25 soft privileged weebs will scream this was dirty.
Both dudes aren't looking at eachother and trying to make a play. The victim gets on his knees and .3 seconds later eats shit. Doyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
Sounds like the refs at the World JR’s.
I think you nailed this take… And truthfully I don't think the hit on Gudbranson was bad either and people went crazy calling it such a dirty play. That play happens half a dozen time in a game but Gudrandson lost his footing. That is why he was upset, a little guy got the best of him… In this case he's making a play on the puck definitely expecting to make contact and comes to find the d man is on his knees at the blue and tries to avoid or at least not make the impact as severe as a regular body check.
My issue is that I don't think Välimäki is eligible to be hit at any point during this play. Cousins tries to time his body contact so that he hits Välimäki as soon as Välimäki controls the puck, but Välimäki never takes control of the puck.
Cousins gets 2 for interference in my book.
100% people saying otherwise are blinded by hatred of the dude. He plays a hard game, and recently has been caught in a few unfortunate situations. Theres a reason he hasnt been suspended, and its not because Player Safety is to blame.
Yep, well said. Didn’t deserve the following incident, at least not for this play.
The most “evasive” maneuver he could make would be turning or stopping. Even showing any effort to slow his momentum would be nice.