Quote:
Originally Posted by 19Yzerman19
Every time a guy takes a shoulder in the chin, it's a potentially dangerous play. Coming from behind arguably more so. The fact that the contact ended up being pretty wimpy and not causing any significant damage isn't terribly important to me. One of the guys involved moves slightly differently and it's a concussion. Should Kesler be penalized for embellishment? Sure. But no one ever missed a game because someone took a high stick and threw his head back and flopped on the ice. This well could have. Re-do this same sequence ten times and you'll probably see two or three head injuries. It's a risky situation.
I know people just want to think the worst about the Canucks, and they're right because he did flop on the ice afterwards. But letting Nielsen off the hook because of a pre-existing narrative like "Kesler's a diving flopper" is lazy and irresponsible.
:40 through :59. Three angles that show it, especially the last one. It's not very hard, but he pretty clearly hits him in the head with his shoulder.
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If you look at the hit at 49 second mark it looks like Kesler acts out the whole play. It looks fake. I don't think he was hit at all it looks like he kind of plants his face on the back of Nielson's shoulder. Nielson was going for the puck and Kelser saw the opportunity to take "another dive".