Don Cherry takes a run at Darnell Nurse over wicked Reaves hit

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Hockey’s most venerated and controversial opinion-maker Don Cherry at it again at age 90, taking a run at Darnell Nurse’s critique of the wicked hit by Toronto Maple Leafs enforcer Ryan Reaves.

Eight days ago in Toronto, Reaves caught Nurse eyes down, barrelling around the net with the bock, exploding up into Nurse’s head and knocking him out of the game, covered in blood. Nurse missed three games due to the hit, but was back in action and played well against New York this weekend. Reaves got a five-game suspension.

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Cherry first offered up an opinion on the hit itself the next day on his Grapevine podcast, focusing on how such a hit would have been acceptable 30 or 40 years ago.

“You know, it’s a funny thing,” Cherry said. “Nobody ever come around (the net) like that with their head down, because the wingers would leave, and as soon as they saw you do that once, they’d get you the next time.”

Cherry continued: “It’s funny when Nurse was coming around the net, he was looking right down at the puck. Yeah, no question at all that he was going to come up with the puck.”

Cherry predicted Reaves would get a five game suspension, which is what happened..

Cherry added that forward like Toronto Maple Leafs attacker Mitch Marner would never get hit like that. “Mitch Marner knows exactly anything that goes on. If it happens to him, it’ll be by accident.

“Certain guys, each shift they go out there and try and go and inflict pain”

This week, Nurse shared his critique of the Reaves’ hit.

“In situations like that there’s definitely an onus on the player with the puck to be aware of where everyone else in on the ice,” he said of his own responsibility. “For sure. With that said, even if you put yourself in a bad spot there’s lots of body on a 6-foot, 4-inch player (Nurse’s height) to hit and not one piece was touched other than my head. You can argue about the intent, but there’s certain guys in the league that each shift they go out there and try and go and inflict pain and I think it’s pretty obvious what was going on there….It is what it is. For me, move on and get ready for coming back to keep the momentum going that was going before that.”

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Former NHL enforcer Jay Rosehill said on Leafs Nation he didn’t like Nurse implying that Reaves had intended to injure. “I just think it’s a garbage take. Darnell is a guy who has played the game hard. He’s thrown big hits before. Darnell, you’ve taken off your glove to punch other players with a bare-handed fist. Are you out there to hurt guys? No. He’s playing hard and playing within the game with the game. That’s what Reavo is doing.”

Reaves would have preferred to have hit Nurse in the shoulder, Rosehill continued: “Darnell Nurse is wheeling the net like it’s a Sunday beer league skate, forgetting he’s in the NHL with the fourth line forechecking him, and Reavo screwed up, catches only his head, wraps it around the other side of his body. It’s a bad look. It’s the last thing that Ryan Reaves wanted.”

]On this podcast this Sunday, Cherry said he Reaves did not deserve five games, then read out the Nurse quote at length, ending with the Nurse’s observation that some players are out every shift to inflict pain.

“Well,” Cherry said, “I mean, isn’t that the name of the game?”

Cherry downplayed the impact on Nurse. “He got a goal the next game.”

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Cherry’s son Tim, the show’s host, criticized Nurse for speaking out: “Reeves, you know, it was a hit, he got five games and stuff like that, but you don’t need to bury the guy in the paper like that.”

My take

1. Cherry is right that in the past this hit would not have drawn a suspension. I’ll suggest it’s only in the last 10-to-15 years — with increased knowledge of the nasty possible long-term impact of concussions — that we’ve seen a crackdown on this kind of headshot.
2. Nurse is right that there’s still an element in the NHL looking to level this kind of hit. It’s not the high number of players it used to be. But there’s a certainly a handful of them who are so reckless that a number of brutal hits like this are going to land each season. Lengthy suspensions is the only way to get through to them.
3. Nurse himself has thrown some monster checks, but never that kind of head shot, at least not that I can recall. He’s taken some hits, but never one like the Reaves hit. Nurse is right to acknowledge he would have done well to have his head up but the targeting a player’s head is strictly forbidden now and Reaves crossed a major line.
4. It was great to see Nurse come back and play something close to his ‘A’ game against New York. He’d been playing good-to-great hockey in the two weeks before the injury. It was by far his best spell under d-man coach Paul Coffey. Perhaps Nurse and Coffey have finally worked out how to get the best out of this player, who is critical to the Stanley Cup hopes of the Edmonton Oilers.
5. Now that it appears Nurse avoided serious injury from the Reaves hit, it’s easy to set it aside perhaps. That said, it’s amazing to me that Nurse avoided more serious injury on the play. If he’s ticked off at Reaves for this severe infraction of the rules of the NHL as the league now stands, he’s got every right.

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