In a bit of insult added to injury, the San Jose Sharks will have to accept that Ivan Barbashev will be in the lineup again tomorrow night. The St. Louis Blues forward will not receive any supplementary discipline for his hit on Tomas Hertl. Greg Wyshynski of ESPN tweets that the Department of Player Safety could not determine if the head was a main point of contract, or whether the force of the hit was enough to warrant suspension. Barbashev came across the middle and made contact with Hertl, who ended up missing the third period after being removed from the game.
The Sharks were embarrassed on home ice last night in a 5-0 loss that saw Hertl, Erik Karlsson, Joe Pavelski and Joonas Donskoi all leave due to injury for large chunks of the game. Micheal Haley and Evander Kane both also received misconduct penalties, leaving the Sharks’ bench extremely short to end the game. The team now faces a do-or-die situation in St. Louis tomorrow night and could be without several top players.
Still, the Sharks have shown in these playoffs that they’re not easy to defeat even when things look dire. The team scored four times on a five minute major against the Vegas Golden Knights in game seven of the first round and managed to hold on to an early lead in game seven of the second round against the Colorado Avalanche. Those long series may be taking their toll on the group physically, but also may have prepared them for this elimination game tomorrow night.
So apparently it’s ok to allow headshots in the NHL now that’s good to know for game 6 tomorrow
Any head shot delivered to a Shark will *DEFINITELY* result in a (minimum) 20-minute major (new invented rule to help San Jose even more than they already have been propped up >> look it up: Rule lsfjlsjfljslf – section slfjldj, AKA Double-Secret Probation) Ya heard it here first!
The Loss Vegas Golden Knights team must be so good at golf by now. How we miss them.
It only applies to favored teams. Or teams the NHL thinks need propping up. And since the gutless NHL can’t dare defy all the butthurt Vegas Avs and Blues fans you know what that means.
I guess the only way to win is by taking out your opponents with brutal injury hits. Class act!
You think that was brutal? Not even close. I guess you were also complaining then when Burns threw 20 elbows last series against the Avs…..
The Blues player didn’t even lunge into Hertl….. how long did Thornton get suspended when he put Perron out for 11 months with a blindside intentional hit?
The two hits aren’t even close when it comes to intent….
I see Kleenex sales are up in the San Jose area. Bunch of freaking hypocrites.
Butthurt blues fans? You guys won on a hand pass. And then last game 2 of San Jose’s players got booted for dirty plays. Kane tried to take out our goalie. But the blues are butthurt and dirty? That’s comical. San Jose Dan’s are delusional
You must be pretty good at golf given the length of time you last laced up your skates.
It doesn’t matter Boston will celebrate with the cup, Bergeron, Kreji, Chara leading the party mobile.
This was clearly not a suspendible play
I call it +1/-1 for the hand pass bullshit. NHL self correcting itself.
If any of you butthurt Shark fans are capable, understand that Barbashev actually moved to avoid Hertl. If you want to review an intentional hit, take a look at the initial point of contact when Dillon trucked Pietrangelo. Nobody is mentioning that, nor Kane’s sticking out a knee on both Petro and Terasenko. I guess that doesn’t fit the pathetic crybaby narrative.