Sometimes hits are so hard, as a fan even you can feel the impact of the striking bodies colliding.
If you aren’t aware of your surroundings on the ice, there could be a player looming, ready to drop you with a huge hit. Sometimes you can see it coming (like when you’re the first player to the puck in the corner) and other times you get nailed because of a pass that leads you into the shoulder of the opposition.
Less than two minutes into the Los Angeles/Toronto contest, we saw the biggest hit of the night. Rookie Andreas Borgman sent a pass up to Dominic Moore, who then was given a hard-hitting welcome from LA Kings forward Nic Dowd. Moore had no idea the hit was coming, and he was dropped heavily by Dowd. It was a clean textbook hit; Dowd had momentum and used his shoulder to smash Moore’s chest. Both players went down from the hit but were up less than a second later.
Borgman’s pass was arguably a suicide pass, where the receiver is led into a hit after accepting the pass. But we have seen many times where a pass like that is apart of a good breakout, it’s just Dowd zeroed in on Moore and (cleanly) stepped up.
