Quote:
Originally Posted by Enoch Root
Disagree on tucking the elbow.
Watch the gif again and focus on his arm. Before making contact with Ferland's head, his elbow is already gone past 90 degrees and is pointing forward. It then recoils back a bit from the contact, but at the moment before contact you can see it is out and forward.
The guys that have been talking about his pivot have gotten it right, IMO.
As a defenseman (that missed a lot of guys), I can say that when you miss with a check, the natural tendency is to throw your arms out to try and make some contact. The result is that your body is moving away from the hit but the arms move into the other player.
That is not what happened here. He planted his body and turned his whole upper body into the hit. And he led with his arm/elbow.
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We're talking about a split second. He starts the hit with his left arm trailing behind him. As he makes the hit he's bringing his arm forward to fold both hands in front of his chest, and it's the glove/forearm that hits Ferland's head, not the elbow. Ya, there's still a bit of movement in the arms due to the timing, but I don't see anything other than a guy bracing for a hit and driving through, not up, with contact to the head because Ferland's in a crouched position.
Let's put this another way: say Volchenkov's hands/forearm/elbow remain perfectly stable. Do you think the hit looks any different? I don't. Contact was made as it was not because Volchenkov targeted the head, but because of their relative positions as he went through Ferlund. Careless, but not malicious, IMO.