Ironically, that opens the door for the ways he's not healthy to be exploited. If he's playing, he's giving his opponent a green light to treat him like any other healthy player and get physical with him in any way available to them according to the rules - or at least how the game is being called. Stone can't play in an NHL game with specific prohibitions on the type of hits he can take. Unfortunately, when we're dealing with issues of intent, policing becomes very difficult.īy suiting up for a game in a contact sport players create a permission structure for their opponents to hit them anywhere they normally would. In an ideal world, the NHL would promptly act in situations like this with punishments that deter this kind of ugliness. They might have perceived a few extra cross checks as something making the winger's life harder as opposed to conceptualizing any of their actions as an attempt to injure.Įven so, this is a bad look for the Oilers - a team that was on the other side of a similar controversy last season when the Calgary Flames appeared to be targeting Leon Draisaitl's injured ankle. Edmonton's players may have been aware of Stone's predicament and acted independently. The devil's advocate argument is that the hits in the clip above are also generally within the realm of what you tend to see in the NHL playoffs - and it would be a stretch to call any of them dangerous.
If anyone on the Oilers coaching staff sat down his players and gave them literal instructions to go after Stone's back that's in the same ballpark as Gregg Williams infamous "affect the head" speech that rocked the NFL in 2012. Any effort to injure a player or re-aggravate an existing injury is despicable and has no place in the game. On the surface, this seems like an unambiguous issue.
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