The discussion of Mason Raymond’s neck injury has dominated today’s off day before Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals. Raymond left Game 6 after taking a crunching hit from Bruins defenseman Johnny Boychuk and the hit left Raymond with fractured vertebra in his neck, an injury that had the medical staff sending him off to Mass General Hospital to be treated and examined further. Raymond will likely miss the next three to four months of action thanks to the injury.
Today, Canucks GM Mike Gillis spoke with the media in Vancouver after Canucks practice and explained his view of the hit and vented his frustration with the situation plainly. When asked if he spoke with the league about the play, Gillis let loose.
“I haven’t had any discussion with them after last night. All I can tell you is my observations of the hit. I didn’t see the puck around him. I thought the Boston player used a can opener and drove him into the boards with enough force to break his back. That’s what I saw.”
The “can opener” move is a quick and subtly dirty one so Gillis’ description of the hit is eyebrow-raising on its own. When pressed to compare this play with that of what happened to Nathan Horton thanks to Aaron Rome’s major interference penalty that saw Horton knocked out of the playoffs with a concussion and Rome suspended for what amounts to be the length of the series, Gillis didn’t quite take the bait.Q. Mike, given that, then, and given the suspension earlier to Aaron Rome and the heavy hand the league brought down, are you expecting any kind of supplementary discipline, and if there isn’t, will you be disappointed that there isn’t?
MIKE GILLIS: I’m not in charge of supplementary discipline, so I’m not the right person to ask about that.
I think when you see the severity of that injury, the way our doctors described it to me, very, very dangerous, and, you know, I’m always disappointed when you see any player get injured. I was asking Lawrence when the last time we saw a broken back occur in the NHL. I can’t recall it other than an incident here a number of years ago.
But it wasn’t a chipped vertebrae or cracked vertebrae. It’s broken through the belly of his vertebrae, so it’s a very serious injury. You never want to see any player on any team have an injury like that.
One of the curious sights through that entire situation last night was seeing Raymond helped off the ice without the assistance of a stretcher or a backboard or anything else meant to help keep the neck safe. Gillis did have an explanation of sorts for that.
“I don’t know why. I’m unsure. I think because he began to move his feet and he had feeling. We wondered about that as well, but I haven’t had the chance to ask Mike. But our trainers are excellent trainers, so I’m sure they felt there was no risk at that point because of what he was saying and what he was doing on the ice,” Gillis said.
We’re not about to play armchair doctor here but given how serious the injury is (Raymond is still at the hospital in Boston waiting to be fitted with a corset and cleared for travel so he can fly home) it’s stunning to know that he was able to get up and do that. At the very least, we’re glad to hear that the prognosis is good for Raymond and while he may be out of action until November, it looks like he’ll be all right to play again at some point.
The Canucks are going to miss him in Game 7 and Jannik Hansen will likely have his hands full trying to replicate what Raymond brings to that line with Chris Higgins and Ryan Kesler. As for the the Canucks being upset that the league isn’t taking a look into taking action against Boychuk, it’s a tough play to go wild about as a person with no ties to either team.
Canucks fans and brass want Boychuk to sit down and that makes sense for them, but it’s hard to come up with a reason for doing so in this case. The result was ugly but that doesn’t necessarily mean that something illegal happened.