Seattle Kraken: Losing McCann and How it Affects the Series
The Seattle Kraken are in the midst of the 1st round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Due to an illegal hit, they have to figure out a game plan to defeat the defending Stanley Cup champions without their top goal scorer for the foreseeable future.
The Seattle Kraken went into Game 4 of their 1st round Stanley Cup playoff series down 2-1 in the best-of-7 against the defending Stanley Cup champions, the Colorado Avalanche. Seattle came out flying, outshooting their opponent by a 10-1 margin to start the game.
The crowd was buzzing after the Kraken went up 1-0 on a slapshot from the point by defenseman Will Borgen just over 3 minutes into the game. Then at 8:24 of the 1st period, everything changed.
The Hit
With forward Yanni Gourde in the penalty box for a roughing penalty, the Seattle Kraken found themselves down a man. After a great block by the penalty killers, forward Jared McCann snuck behind the Avalanche defense and sprung on a breakaway.
He took a hard wrist shot, which Avalanche goaltender Alexandar Georgiev made a routine save on. The puck immediately flew in the air and went over the netting into the stands, where fans were seen jumping in an attempt to catch a free souvenir.
Everything seemed pretty routine -until it wasn’t. Colorado defenseman Cale Makar made a great effort to recover from the defensive lapse, skating hard to catch McCann before he took the shot.
Directly after the shot went out of play, Makar skated next to McCann in the corner and gave him a slight shove. Again, very routine, especially in the playoffs.
The two disengaged as the puck went out of play. After 2-3 seconds of the play being dead, Makar continued skating toward and shoved an unsuspecting McCann hard into the boards.
McCann’s head went forcefully into the boards, and he immediately crumpled to the ice. Their 40-goal scorer had to be helped off the ice by the Seattle Kraken medical staff. Shortly after, he was ruled out for the remainder of the game.
Zebras blow the call
No penalty was called on the play. After the fans erupted into a “Ref You Suck!” chant, the officials gathered by the penalty box to assess a 5-minute major for interference to Makar.
In the playoffs, the referees automatically review any major penalty by looking at replay footage. Upon review, they reduced the penalty to a 2-minute minor.
Understandably, the fans were outraged by the change. This was a classless hit on an unsuspecting and defenseless player, which led to a head injury, something the NHL is allegedly serious about eliminating.
With or without a penalty, Makar should know better after taking a nasty headshot himself in February that put him out of action.