Thursday night was an eventful night for the Hurricanes and the Wild with 7 goals scored in total, most within mere seconds of each other. Not only was it Canes captain Jordan Staal’s 910th game, earning him the top spot in most games played in Hurricanes history, he also got up to some action in defense of Jalen Chatfield.
Jalen Chatfield was on the receiving end of what the refs deemed an illegal hit from Minnesota forward, Tyler Pitlick. The call was an illegal check to the head, earning Pitlick a match penalty. Naturally, this has caused some controversy with fans.
This season for the Hurricanes has been filled with injuries to key players so far. Most of these injuries have been on the blue line, so with three rookie defensemen on the ice, the Canes almost can’t afford to lose another key defenseman like Jaccob Slavin or Shayne Gostibehere. Though these rookies have done well so far, helping Carolina build up a win streak, it’s ideal to not have to take that gamble again. Unfortunately, Chatfield will most likely have to miss playing for a while simply due to concussion protocol, which might prove to be an issue to the already injury-prone team.
Some Wild fans are claiming that the hit was legal, stating that Chatfield should keep his head up, or that head-contact wad unavoidable due to size difference. A few fans are even claiming that the sport has “gone soft” and that every big hit is being called illegal nowadays.
While you could argue the call, you can’t argue the NHL rulebook, so let’s take a look at what the book defines as an illegal check to the head. This can be found in the NHL Rulebook as Rule 48 under Section 6.
Let’s compare this information to the hit.
To start, the main point of contact with this hit is Jalen Chatfield’s head. Additionally, even though Chatfield wasn’t looking straight up, his head didn’t move from its spot the entire time that Pitlick was skating towards him. This means that Pitlick had time to adjust his hit to avoid head contact with a player that is shorter than him. Since the referees assessed Pitlick a match penalty, we can assume that they determined that he was intentionally trying to injure Chatfield. I believe this is where most of the controversy lies, as with any call like this, because it’s impossible to truly know for sure if the player did it on purpose. With match penalties, the Commissioner can add extra discipline if they feel it’s needed. Canes fans were calling for Pitlick to be suspended, or at least fined, but seeing as it’s been a few days and Pitlick has been sent back to the AHL, Gary Bettman has decided no extra discipline was needed.
Overall, I think that the refs made the right call when looking at the rulebook and the replay.
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