The "If It Happens to My Guy, It's Outrageous, If It Happened To Their Guy, It Was Just An Accident" NHL Team/Media Hypocrisy Has Gotten Tiresome

It’s gotten to be just so tiresome and predictable. Whenever a top guy on a team gets seriously hurt, the Zapruder Film NHL social media society comes out in force to say what an outrage it was that their guy got hurt, and “when is the league going to do something about this????”

The latest tiresome case in point: the Cale Makar/Kylo Okposo incident today in Buffalo. Here’s the play:

I was watching the game via the Buffalo TV feed today, and you would have thought this play was the equivalent of a tiddly-wink move between two grandmothers at tea time. It happened to their guy, so no big deal. That was the general vibe from the Buffalo crew. Our guys don’t play dirty. They don’t try to hurt people. Let’s move on.

Click on the Altitude TV crew, however, and it was the equivalent of the JFK assassination.

“How is that NOT A PENALTY and a suspension??? Okposo on Makar!” Altitude Avs studio host Kyle Keefe tweeted.

Avs Altitude analyst John-Michael Liles said “100 times out of 100 that’s a penalty” about what Okposo did. Avs coach Jared Bednar essentially said it was a “dangerous” play by Okposo, as did a couple of Avs players such as Devon Toews.

The irony: the only one who didn’t think it was an outrageous, dirty hit was Makar himself. He blamed himself for having “no effort” in retrieving the puck, which left him vulnerable to such a play.

I don’t care who is “right” and who is “wrong” on this play. It’s up for debate, and each side has a case. Personally, I DO think it was something of a dangerous play by Okposo. He put his stick between Makar’s legs, then gave him a shove from behind. It should have been a boarding penalty, in my view.

But what is so tiresome about this thing is how the aggrieved party always thinks this needs to be a referendum on “player safety” and how the rules somehow need to be immediately overhauled so this kind of thing can never happen again.