Ekman-Larsson Leaves on a Lauzon Hit With No Penalty, Then Practices a Day Later

The hit was late, the game was tied, and the puck was somewhere else. Oliver Ekman-Larsson left Toronto’s 4-3 shootout loss to Vegas on Thursday with under two minutes left in regulation after Jeremy Lauzon drove him to the ice, Sportsnet reports, and no penalty was called. A day later Ekman-Larsson was back at practice, which splits the story in two: the injury scare faded, but the non-call is the part still worth arguing about.

What happened on the play?

Toronto, which had led 3-0 in the first period, was tied 3-3 and pushing late when Ekman-Larsson moved deep in the zone and took the hit from Lauzon, Editor in Leaf reports. He fell hard, was slow to get up, skated off under his own power and went straight to the locker room, Sportsnet reports. He did not return for overtime or the shootout.

He had played 26 shifts totalling 15 minutes 22 seconds, Heavy reports, on Toronto’s third pairing with Troy Stecher. In a week when this desk has covered a goaltender returning after 676 days and two knee replacements, a defenceman walking off a hit like that under his own power was the first good sign.

Why do the Leafs think it should have been a penalty?

Because of where the puck was. As TSN’s Mike Johnston noted on the broadcast, reported by Editor in Leaf, Ekman-Larsson had not even touched the puck, which was several feet away and involved in a completely different play. A hit on a player who is not playing the puck is the textbook shape of interference, and driving him into the boards adds a boarding argument on top.

Coach Jim Hiller believed something should have been called, according to the post-game reports carried by Editor in Leaf and The Leafs Nation. The officials conferred and kept their whistles down in the final two minutes of a tied game, which is precisely the game-state in which players most suspect the standard has quietly changed.

How bad did the injury turn out to be?

Much less bad than the exit suggested. Hiller said on Thursday night that he was not concerned, Heavy reports, and Friday settled it: TSN reports Ekman-Larsson was on the practice ice in Las Vegas, and The Leafs Nation reports he took his usual place beside Stecher as Hiller reworked his pairings for Saturday’s game in Colorado.

That turnaround separates this from a genuine injury story. Had he missed practice, Toronto’s next man was Nick Blankenburg, who has not played a game yet this season, Heavy reports. Instead the pairing stays intact, and the question that remains is officiating, not availability.

Why did the timing sharpen the argument?

Because there was no time left for the non-call to be balanced out. The hit came with under two minutes left in a tied game, so Toronto spent overtime and the shootout without a defenceman it would normally have used, and lost both. A power play in that spot is not a marginal advantage; it is very likely the game. That is why late-game non-calls draw a different level of scrutiny from players than the same whistle swallowed in the first period, and why Hiller raised the call at all on a night when his player turned out to be fine.

Could the league still act on the hit?

It has not yet, in any report the sources checked here had seen by Saturday morning, and the absence of an on-ice call does not close that door. This desk’s coverage of Frank Nazar’s match penalty for his hit on Bo Horvat shows the two tracks running separately this week: the on-ice punishment was only the start, and a hearing and a two-game suspension followed a day later.

The contrast inside the same week is the point. Nazar was penalised, ejected, heard and suspended. Fraser Minten talked a referee out of a wrong-man penalty on a hot mic in another game. Lauzon’s hit drew no call of any kind, and whether player safety sees it differently is the one part of this story, unlike the fan-run counter tracking Connor Hellebuyck’s holdout losses, that cannot be settled by watching a total tick up. It will be settled by a hearing announcement, or by silence.