[I don’t pretend to be the end all be all here, but in the years I’ve been watching and writing about this sports – I have some shit to say about this sequence of events and I just want to air them out.]
If you did not see last night, the Rangers and Capitals game had a sequence of events occur that have (rightfully) caused a stir. Watch these but viewer digression is advised (especially the second one).
IMO Tom Wilson should be done for at least the rest of the season and playoffs. At the very LEAST. Now lets run through this series of events.
First there is the check to Buchnevich (Rangers #89) that started this. Wilson (Caps #43) gets on Buchnevich’s neck/head when he’s in the crease and throws an extra punch down to his head while he’s already holding Buchnevich down on the ice. That in and of itself is a scumbag move. That’s what prompted Ryan Strome (Rangers #16 standing to Wilson’s right) to try and pull Wilson off of Buchnevich. That causes some Caps to come over and we have a kerfuffle to the side of the net. Wilson ends up towards the bottom of this. Here is a closer look at that:
This is where things take a turn and I’ll give some play by play screenshots (from the top video if you want to watch in real time) so you know what I’m taking about.
When Wilson breaks free from the pile, he immediately gets on his knees and goes to swing at whoever (I can’t see the name, might be Strome) is still laying on his stomache on the ice. Panarin sees this and runs to intervene.
That’s when Panarin jumps on Wilson’s back. Was that the smartest move? No. But Panarin seems to think that’s his only option so he hops on Wilson’s back, Wilson gets up, spins him off, and another little scrum erupts once more.
So then, Panarin and Wilson start ruffing up, they throw some jabs, and Wilson knocks Panarin’s helmet off in one of the hits.
This following part is what pisses me off the most about all of this. This specific few seconds.
Panarin is pulled to the ice by Wilson. In these few seconds a lot happens. From the first angle, it looks like they just go down in the tussle which regardless is super dangerous because Panarin is still helmet-less. But that is not it. It’s the fact that Wilson grabbed Panarin’s hair, pulled him backwards, so he went down towards the ice with no helmet on – that’s one of the biggest scumbag moves here. This is from the second video above. Wherever someone pulls your hair, that’s where your head is going – there is no denying that and we all know that, it’s common sense. You know what is going to happen when you do it.
So to pull a guy down backwards while he’s got no helmet on, towards a hard sheet of ice? Fuck you buddy. Panarin luckily didn’t land on his head, his shoulder went down first because he was able to shift to the side. I wouldn’t want to imagine what would have happened if he had landed head first, with all his weight going into that.
THEN to add insult to injury, Wilson keeps swinging at Panarin while he’s down on the ice. Panarin tried to get back up and fight back, the refs tried to intervene but Wilson kept pushing him down and swinging.
This dude has time and time again been served suspension after fine after suspension after second chance and at this point it’s fucking ridiculous. This is different from players who go in and are pests to get in people’s heads like Tkachuk or Marchand. This is different than the guys that used to go in and square up against the other toughest guy to rally their team like Martin or Shaw. I think at one point, that was the kind of guy Tom Wilson was. But now, he’s just progressed into a problem and a reckless player. Tom Wilson – at this point in his career – is just a scumbag and he has never learned from any kind of punishment the league has put him through. I think Mika Zibanejad said it well in his post game. Wilson had no respect or any other player on the ice, or their safety. If he did, he wouldn’t have pulled this shit, that’s for damn sure. He didn’t care what happened to Buchnevich when he pushed his head back into the ice, he didn’t care when he pulled Panarin down by his hair. Now, it seems like Panarin will be missing the Rangers remaining games, according to Elliotte Friedman.
The NHL can’t keep letting Wilson go out, do needless shit like that, and get away with it. One of these times, he’s going to end someone’s career. I’m not someone who is yelling to ban fighting or hits in hockey but this is on a completely different level. This is violence for violence sake from a repeat offender. And if you don’t think Wilson is a repeat offender, kick rocks peebrain. This is just straight up disrespect for the people you play the game with. That’s got to go. At the end of the day, this is a hockey game and those players have lives. You have to have respect for their safety and life. Fights happen, rivalries run hot, but at the end of the day these are still people and they deserve respect for fucks sake. Tom Wilson should – at the bare fucking minimum – be done for the season.
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