James Neal's Hit On Petr Prucha: Clean Or Illegal?

there is no way anyone can say this hit was dirty. If you want to blame something blame the glass

you’ve never played hockey. period. and if you did play hockey, and you think that hit was dirty, well, mr. brunnstrom, what are you doing commenting on a hockey blog anyways?

Looks clean to me. Form the angles provided, there is no elbow, no charging. Prucha is up against the boards so no boarding.

Not sure what all the hub-bub is. Yeah. I just went hub-bub.

I have more of an issue with Jovanovski’s response than the initial hit that looked clean to me.

but making a pole that says, “was james neal’s hit unnecessary?” and then having “yes” as the only answer, is pretty ridiculous.

i would be upset if one of our guys went down. you never want to see an injury. but a day has passed. there is NO WAY you can call that hit dirty. no way.

far too many player in this league are staring at their passes and not protecting themselves afterwards. they get hit, and aren’t protecting themselves, something you learn when you’re 12-13 in north america. neal finished his check, which happens, what 5-6 times a SHIFT. it was a NORMAL HOCKEY PLAY.

give me a break. your guy is hurt. be pissed. but at some point, you need to admit that there was nothing dirty about that basic hockey play.

’nuff said

and how does he get multiple votes? he has 4 of them. i think you should only get a vote per goal. he’s cheating my imaginary system.

This reminds me of Robidas’ hit on JP Dumont earlier in the season: looks dirty, but was clean. The hit will probably be reviewed because of Neal’s suspension earlier this season, but he’s probably not going to get suspended

I had to deal with someone breaking our site rules, and that deleted a couple of threads of comments.

I apologize for that.

Here’s the big issue on the hit:

It wasn’t the glass itself, but rather the metal stanchion where the penalty box glass is seamed together. (h/t to @patty_in_dallas on twitter) Rather than being a forgiving glass surface with shock absorbers and some give, he hit a rigid metal bar that no matter how you cut it was the one responsible for Prucha’s injury. That same injury could have happened at any arena, with any glass. They all have metal bits around the penalty box doors and that’s always a dangerous spot.

Did it look anywhere near that to anyone last night? Nope. Would it have helped any? No. I was ready to leave the game after the injury because I stopped caring about what else happened. I felt, as a grown man, sick to my stomach watching a player on the ice like that. It makes you angry. It should. I wrote about that, because that’s what being a blogger here is about. Not being objective, but conveying your (my) feelings as a fan

Is the fact that anyone who thinks it was dirty keeps calling it a headshot, which means that there are far too many people out there who have no clue what a headshot is. Just because a player hits their head on the boards, glass, stanchions, etc. does not make it a headshot.

That being said, if the only replay Yotes fans got was the one that was zoomed out from like the rafters (which I saw on YT from their feed), then it’s no wonder why they thought it was dirty. I myself was on that side of things until I found the link to the above video last night, which clarifies everything.

-The glass
-Yotes TV crew
-Fabian Brunnstrom

but from this clip, the hit is unquestionably clean. I would also note that Neil (who is coming from behind the player) actually makes an effort to move slightly to the front of him, basically hitting him on the side, instead of the back, which he could easily have done. As others have noted, there’s no highstick or elbow and no contact with the head. The player is along the boards already, so boarding doesn’t apply. It’s not charging since he changes his direction right before the hit. The one aspect of the rulebook that you can debate is the part of the boarding rule that says that it is the checking player’s responsibility not to make the check if one could reasonably assume the player would be sent dangerously into the boards. But I can’t see from this clip any way in which that check would have looked potentially dangerous before it happened. It’s not only a textbook clean hit, it’s a textbook clean hit situation.

Compare to the Bobby Ryan hit on Moller a couple weeks ago in the Ducks/Kings game. Many argued that it was a clean hit, elbows down, etc.. But the part where you’re supposed to avoid contact if you could reasonably cripple the guy for life was somehow overlooked. Not by the refs, but by the ducks fans.

Seamless glass does suck.

I’d say it was a clean hit… a bit unnecessary, but clean. Dirty, less than necessary hits do happen in hockey.

However. I’m a bit worried that Neal might be a secretly dirty player. The hit on Dorsett earlier in the year had the same ordinary hockey play look to it. Maybe there’s more to these hits than meets the eye. Hopefully, that’s not the case though, and Neal has just been unlucky with where he chooses to hit.

Did anybody else see a little Bertuzzi in that Jovanovski retaliation? I really think that that could have been a serious injury had Neal not turned to face him last moment…

Let’s be honest: the glass sucks and it was a freak accident. Neal had no intention to hurt him and it was weird how Prucha was injured by it. It’s very unfortunate that Prucha was injured, but like I said, it was a freak injury.

The only dirty part was the Coyotes’ retaliation. How was Doan’s hit on Neal shortly afterward NOT charging? And Jovanovski could have injured Neal if Neal hadn’t seen him coming…