Evgeni Malkin won’t be suspended for this hit on Sean Couturier, but if his name were … oh, I don’t know, not Evgeni Malkin, he’d have racked up enough infractions in the five Eastern Conference Quaterfinal games between the Flyers and Penguins to at least warrant some kind of supplementary discipline.
His hit that knocked out Nicklas Grossmann with a concussion in Game 4? Fine. There wasn’t a great angle. He might not have made contact with Grossmann’s head. It was tough to tell conclusively either way.
But this hit on Couturier? No grey area. Shoulder hit from the blindside, where the head is the principal point of contact. Malkin deserves discipline for this one, if only because he’s now clearly shown a pattern of head-hunting. Evgeni Malkin might be a dirty hockey player, but when you’re shutting him down, as Grossmann and Couturier have for the most part in this playoff series, he clearly doesn’t take too kindly to that.
He won’t be suspended, but at the very least, the entire league now knows he’s a dirty hockey player.
