Elias Pettersson Will Miss Up To 10 Days With A Concussion From Getting Body Slammed
So by now we’ve all seen the hit that Florida Panthers defenseman Mike Matheson put on Elias Pettersson on Saturday night. Matheson had a meeting with the NHL department of player safety at 10am and we still have yet to hear anything, but from the looks of things, it sounded like he was on the ice by 11am today, so I’d imagine he won’t be missing any time.
Pettersson on the other hand won’t be so lucky. The Canucks forward will miss 7-10 days with concussion like symptoms, but will still travel with the team on the road as McKenzie mentioned.
In terms of the hit, I definitely don’t think it was a clean hit. But was it worthy of a suspension? I’d probably say no. While I would like to give him one game so everyone shuts the hell up about it online, then are you starting to suspend guys because of the backlash you’ll receive? Fuck that.
If we are going to break down the entire play here that got Pettersson concussed, I’d say that the original hit was definitely a clean hit. No question about that. But Matheson then followed through and threw Pettersson to the ice. Now, this is a move that guys have been doing forever as Biz pointed out on Spittin’ Chiclets. But as the guys also pointed out on the podcast this week, with Matheson being so much bigger and stronger than Pettersson and Pettersson being a top young talent in the game, it’s definitely going to have the internet people up in arms.
I just don’t understand why Matheson continued after the original hit and tried to throw Pettersson through the ice. But it is hockey, emotions run high. I’m not going to sit here and call the guy a bad dude because of the play. Mike Matheson isn’t a dirty hockey player, I think he just got caught in a situation where he was way stronger than his victim and because of that Pettersson got concussed from it.
The guys broke it down perfectly on today’s episode of Spittin’ Chiclets. Listen here.