This isn’t going to be a typical post-game review. The Tampa Bay Lightning were outplayed by the Detroit Red Wings on Saturday afternoon, and they lost the game as a result. The Red Wings deserved the victory. That’s about all you need to know.
Instead, this blog is going in another direction.
Let’s rewind to 3:43 of the first period:
Take a look - Justin Abdelkader pushed Jason Garrison into the boards from behind, resulting in an injury that forced Garrison to leave the game.
And, from another angle:
If you watch first the video I’ve included above, you’ll hear the commentator note that it was a “dangerous hit.” Garrison was in a vulnerable position with his back turned. While Garrison did lose his edge (before or after contact?), Abdelkader leaned right into his numbers and made the situation a lot worse than it had to be. As a result, the Red Wings forward was given a two-minute minor penalty.
Could it have been a five-minute major? Maybe. Was it worthy of a game misconduct? It's easy to make that argument. But, these aren’t the questions I’m here to answer. What I do know is that this is the sort of hit the NHL wants out of the game. The NHL doesn’t want guys being hit when they are in vulnerable positions, as Garrison was on that play.
Or, at least that’s what I thought I knew.
My whole hockey belief system was thrown for a loop with a single tweet this afternoon. The tweet was courtesy of Damian Echevarrieta, the NHL’s Vice President of Player Safety and Hockey Operations:
Let me repeat – the NHL’s
Vice President of PLAYER SAFETY.
It’s slightly concerning to me that someone responsible for player safety views this hit as Garrison “losing the physical battle.” That’s bush league language right there. The question I have is this: How can the NHL have a VP of Player Safety who equates being hit from behind with losing the physical battle? It’s frightening. It’s bad for the league. If the NHL is truly interested in protecting players, this isn’t the way to go about doing it.
Until the NHL seriously changes the way it views hits and dishes out discipline, we are going to continue to see stuff like this. Tweets like the one shown above highlight that there still needs to be a big mentality shift when it comes to bad hits in hockey, even from within the league’s office. Even if you don’t think Abdelkader deserved more than a minor penalty for the hit, you can’t possibly suggest that Garrison ‘losing the physical battle’ is a legitimate reason to avoid penalizing the hitter in this case. It makes no sense.
The fact of the matter is that there was no physical battle. The Lightning player was drilled in the numbers. That's the end of the story. Jason Garrison deserves better.
Like I said, this isn’t a regular post-game blog. As always, thanks for reading.
Michael Stuart has been the Tampa Bay Lightning writer for HockeyBuzz since 2012. Visit his archive to read more or follow him on Twitter. 
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