Tough Call: Avs’ Makar on Kraken’s McCann

While we wait for the official ruling from the NHL’s Department of Player Safety, check out Tough Call’s breakdown of the late hit by Colorado Avalanche defenseman Cale Makar on Seattle Kraken leading scorer Jared McCann during Game 4.

Watch out the video for a complete breakdown, plus Tough Call’s suspension recommendation.  Some highlights:

The ref doesn’t blow the whistle until after this hit happens and I want to say that because some people are saying this was clearly after the whistle and it really wasn’t. But what it is is a hit to a player who is not eligible to be checked and should not be expecting to be checked in this particular situation. He’s clearly given up on the play. Nobody has any idea where the puck is and Makar just finishes through him… He throws everything he has into this check.

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Nobody in this situation would expect to be hit with such a violent impact nor are they in any way eligible to receive such a violent hit in this situation.

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This is a great example of why it’s important to suspend based on action, not what we believe the intent of the individual of us, because I believe he really didn’t try and hurt him; I don’t think that was his intention. I think there are other players that maybe would have gone into that and maliciously done that on purpose and what I had the same result, but the intent would have been different.

I don’t think we should punish based on what we think he was trying to do. I think we should just punish based on what happened, which was a super late, super violent hit on an unsuspecting player who was ineligible to receive contact.

Because of the extreme lateness of this hit and the elevated violence of impact, I’m going to classify this as a play that has nothing to do with hockey, putting it in my 6 to 10 game suspension category.

Tough Call would suspend Cale Makar of the Colorado Avalanche six games for interference.