Jacob Trouba is the biggest hitter in the NHL, and that’s been the case for some years. But everyone seems to agree that the New York Rangers defenseman should save it for the regular season and perhaps take it a bit easy during the pre-season.
Trouba had an incident in Wednesday’s clash with the New Jersey Devils that had fans outraged—and he may just have earned himself the first suspension of the year.
Jacob Trouba isn’t a dirty player. His hits are more often than not clean, and he’s a great leader on the ice for the Rangers. But his hit on Tyler Toffoli in the first period of last night’s pre-season game was everything but clean, and fans certainly didn’t like what he displayed.
The game wasn’t your ordinary pre-season contest, as it was intense and testy. Both teams came out flying, and in the first period, a sequence had fans off their seats. Rangers’ Ryan Lindgren had the puck but was destroyed by a clean and massive hit from Kevin Bahl.
Just seconds later, Jacob Trouba was after revenge, with a huge hit on Tyler Toffoli square in the numbers.
To Trouba’s defense, Toffoli turned his back to Trouba, resulting in him being bodied into the board. Trouba wasn’t penalized for the dangerous hit on Toffoli, which made the Devils players furious.
On social media, many were harsh on Trouba for the play, with some even claiming he deserves a suspension.
”Garbage hit by Trouba, he saw numbers the whole way,” one user on Reddit said.
”Drills the numbers a few feet off the boards. This is de facto the f*ckiest hit in hockey, and this clown throws it in a pre-season game,” another said.
”New season, same bully. Wish the league actually cared about player safety,” a third added.
Luckily, Toffoli wasn’t injured by the hit. He didn’t miss a shift and went straight to barking at the referee for not giving Trouba a penalty.
Watch the two massive hits here:
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