DALLAS — As Joe Pavelski lay motionless behind the wild-net during the second period of the Stars’ 3-2 loss in Game 1 Monday night, two moments flashed through my mind.
First April 23, 2019. In an image that looked eerily similar, Pavelski, then with the San Jose Sharks, lay motionless on the ice, covered in a pool of blood, during the first round of the 2019 playoffs against the Vegas Golden Knights ice around his head area.
Second, Dec. 18, 2021. Standing on the podium at the American Airlines Center, Joe Pavelski couldn’t hold back tears as he tried to answer a question about a hit his Dallas teammate Tanner Kero suffered against the Chicago Blackhawks.
As those moments reappeared briefly, Pavelski, still down on the ice, slowly began to move. Finally he got up. With a Stars employee on his left and Mason Marchment on his right, Pavelski cautiously approached the Stars bench. He didn’t stop there; Pavelski went straight through the tunnel and didn’t return to the game.
“Joe is fine,” Stars head coach Pete DeBoer said after the game.
When asked if OK meant he was confident in Pavelski’s Game 2 status, DeBoer was clear.
“No, I’m not confident for Game 2,” DeBoer said. “He’s fine, (like) he’s ‘walking out of the rink by himself’, OK.”
In sketching those moments, I’m not drawing comparisons between Dumba’s hit on Pavelski on Monday and Cody Eakin’s rehearsal on Pavelski in 2019, or Brett Connolly’s hit on Kero in 2021. They were all different in style and circumstances. What they have in common is the sobering image of a man lying on the ice with a serious head injury.
On Monday, officials initially called Dumba for a five-minute major, which gave them a chance to review the play. Ironically, their ability to do so was based on a rule introduced after Eakin’s 2019 hit against Pavelski. Eakin was hit with a large penalty and misconduct. The Sharks scored four goals in the ensuing minutes to bounce back from a 3-0 deficit and win Game 7 5-4 in overtime. The league issued an apology to the Golden Knights, saying Eakin’s violation does not warrant a major, but there was no way to review the call at this time. In Pavelski’s first comments on this hit a few weeks later, he agreed.
“I have no problems with this game,” said Pavelski said in May 2019. “Was it a five-minute major? No. Was I glad they called it that? Damn yes.”
After looking at Dumba’s punch to Pavelski, officers nullified the major and assigned Dumba a two-minute minor for roughing. Max Domi, who admitted not seeing the goal himself, lunged at Dumba in reaction to seeing Pavelski lying on the ice as he was.
“One of your best players goes down like that, that’s hockey,” Domi said of his decision to fight Dumba. “Hope (Joe) is fine … I saw Joe lying there and you never want to see a teammate, especially a guy like that, down there.”
Domi was also given two minutes for gross misconduct and a 10-minute misconduct. All in all, when play resumed, it was four-on-four for two minutes and then back to normal.
“You never want to see that, I don’t care who you play against,” said Wild head coach Dean Evason. “You don’t want anyone to get hurt. I’m glad we have a video briefing because it looks like he’s going to hit him in the head, but obviously when you look at it the stick hits him. Of course we think they got it right, but you still don’t want to see someone lying on the ice like that.”
Stars head coach Pete DeBoer, who was the Sharks head coach in 2019 when Eakin checked Pavelski, also deferred to the check.
“We have the best officers in the world,” DeBoer said. “They called a five, they checked what the right thing is. If they reviewed it and decided it wasn’t a bad hit, then I don’t think it’s for me to disagree. They have to look at it from several different angles and that’s the decision they made.”
It’s worth noting that over the weekend, DeBoer was asked if, as head coach, he can manage a team’s emotions to have a deep playoff run.
“As a coach, you can set the table a little bit with how you handle situations,” DeBoer said.
He recalled a lesson he learned as the Sharks head coach in the 2019 postseason. He recalled his Sharks drawing 1-1 in a series with the Blues and in Game 3 the Sharks won in overtime with a controversial goal when the umpires missed a hand pass from Erik Karlsson.
“I remember watching (Blues head coach) Craig Berube handle that situation,” DeBoer said. “If he was out of joint, maybe his team is out of joint. He was so consistent and so calm in his message to prepare for the next game and the next game and not dwell on it. His team, I thought, were working on his response. In the end they beat us and won the Stanley Cup that year against Boston. I thought that was a key moment.”
Maybe DeBoer is genuinely happy with the officials’ decision. Maybe he’s playing it cool in public to make sure his team stays composed, like he saw Berube do four years ago. In any case, DeBoer struck the right stance when asked about it after the game, especially after seeing how emotional it was for the stars how Domi and others reacted.
For his part, Dumba also thought it was a clean hit and was confident the officials would see it that way – shoulder to shoulder to finish his check. Stars goalkeeper Jake Oettinger disagreed.
“From what I saw it looked like a big penalty,” said Oettinger. “I’ll watch it (again) and I don’t think my opinion will change. It’s tough you lose your leader like that, a guy we need to such a cheap shot. It’s tough. Hopefully he’s not hurt too badly and we can use that as motivation to help each other out.”
Opinions on Dumba’s blow to Pavelski polarized. A few former respected NHL players who aired the game signed it. Wild fans certainly agreed with that assessment. Stars fans largely disagreed.
“They hate when players get hurt, but that’s part of the game,” former star defenseman PK Subban told ESPN.
Fine. Maybe that goal is part of the game. If so, it shouldn’t be.
Before even getting to the body parts affected, there’s no question that Dumba’s hit was late and entirely avoidable. Pavelski got rid of the puck and it’s already a long way from Pavelski. Below you can see that even after Pavelski got rid of the puck, Dumba is in a crouched position.
For those who say he just “finished his check,” Dumba hasn’t even started it, and the puck isn’t nearly as far as Pavelski. For those who mention how fast the game is, the game speed is obviously intense. But notice how Dumba’s defensive partner, Jonas Brodin, goes from observing Pavelski to observing the puck inches from the outside of the net. The puck bounces off the net and rebounds. At this point, Dumba has not yet contacted Pavelski.
That’s more than enough time for Dumba to relax. Dumba decides to do the opposite. For a minute again, forget the body parts directly involved in the hit. Dumba clearly crouches and throws himself up into Pavelski’s head area.
If that’s legal, that’s embarrassing. Many defending the hit while expressing sympathy for Pavelski’s head injury said the hit was shoulder-to-shoulder and the hit to the head came after when Pavelski’s head is clearly in direct contact with the ice. From a certain angle, it certainly looked like Dumba’s shoulder hit Pavelski’s head, but that’s really not the point here.
The point is that a number of hockey goalkeepers will choose to say that those frustrated with the goal don’t know hockey, haven’t played hockey, are trying to ruin the game, or whatever. No one is trying to take the physical out of hockey. It’s part of what makes the sport so beautiful and what so many people, myself included, enjoy. But to pretend that there is nothing that can be done to calibrate that physicality is disingenuous. It’s ingrained in hockey culture, ingrained in the players themselves, that toughness, even if it’s harmful, is the only option. If that means playing through a broken foot or a torn hip labrum or a bad hip, then so be it. Just ask Roope Hintz, Tyler Seguin and Jamie Benn. This culture is a discussion for another day, but head injuries are a whole different animal.
To compare Dumba’s hitting to another combat sport, it would be the most basic penalty for unnecessary rudeness in the NFL for safety reasons and would undoubtedly result in a player being ejected for aiming in college football. The timing of that hit in relation to a defender would draw a rough-the-passer flag 10 times out of 10. Calibrating physicality does not mean eliminating it.
Dumba is a player known for playing at the limit. A month ago it was a hit for Evgeny Kuznetsov.
A few weeks later it was Drew O’Connor.
Less than two weeks later it was Pavelski. I’m not here to make judgments about Dumba or try to find out his intentions. I don’t think he tried to knock Pavelski out of the game. At least I hope he wasn’t. But what’s undeniable is that Dumba’s strike was late, vicious and entirely unnecessary.
For those who think this is acceptable, or particularly part of “playoff hockey,” it may be time to reevaluate. If seeing Pavelski motionless and dazed on the ice in San Jose and in Dallas — not to mention standing on the podium visibly traumatized and emotional — is something seen as just a byproduct of the game, the game needs to be changed .
Stars fans will understandably portray Dumba as a villain to some extent. Many of them also need to have an honest conversation with themselves about how they would view this situation if a Stars player were to strike. Would you be quick to hide behind the legality of the hit, or would you find the humanity to see the ridiculousness?
Because Dumba is not the real problem here. The NHL cannot even muster the strength to admit a relationship between brain injuries and CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated head injuries. How can you try to solve a problem when you don’t even realize it exists?
Dumba is a product of the problem that is a league and culture that continues to enable, encourage and encourage horrific scenes like the one that happened again in Dallas.
(Photo: Tom Pennington/Getty Images)