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 and 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.
