Calgary Flames: No, Gaudreau Getting Injured Isn’t His Own Fault

Calgary Flames All-Star Johnny Gaudreau seems to be a target for many teams. And often times, what should be penalties go uncalled. So maybe we can all stop blaming him for getting injured.

I’m going to start off by apologizing in advance if I come off as a little angry. I’ll try my best to keep it civil, but sometimes you read and see things, and they frustrate the crap out of you. And this is me right now. Calgary Flames lone All-Star this year, Johnny Gaudreau, seems to be a target.

Teams love picking on this guy for some reason. Actually, not for “some reason”, teams usually attack the Johnny Gaudreau of teams.

He got injured in the game against the Minnesota Wild on November 15th and would miss a few weeks for the first time in his NHL career. But what was frustrating to watch is that there were multiple times in the game where he was slashed on the hand and no calls were made.

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Then finally, he gets slashed too hard and his finger gets fractured. He was projected at missing six-weeks, but I think Skittles have some sort of magic healing power to them, and he was back in the lineup not even three weeks later.

As frustrating as that injury was, what was more frustrating was what happened after.

“Maybe if he wore thicker gloves, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Hearing different analysts, commentators, and writers talk about the injury, many people were on Gaudreau’s side for this. They showed the multiple amount of times he got slashed during the game that was never called. And how the Wild could assume they could get away with a few more.

And they did get away with it.

The person who posted that video did us all a favor and marked down the number of times he was slashed. To be fair, many of these were little “taps”. However, and even the entire comment section on this video says it too, there were four calls the refs could have easily made, but they missed.

However, and this is going back to our previous point, there were the odd times where people actually blamed Gaudreau for this (cough cough Eric Francis cough cough). Well, not necessarily blame him, but they said that he should be wearing thicker gloves and he could avoid this. This sounds a lot like victim-blaming to me.

How about, and this is a wild idea, we condemn players who slash other players? Which should be a minor penalty anyways. Instead of telling players to wear thicker gloves so when they do get slashed, at least they’ll be protected. I don’t know, just a thought.

Am I sounding angry? Good.

The league has a knack for being inconsistent with it’s calls and the officiating and fans are getting restless. Especially when it affects their own teams.

“His own stick seemed to be the reason for injury.”

And then we have the game against the Toronto Maple Leafs on January 23rd, 2017, where the Calgary Flames were embarrassed in a 4-0 loss. At one point, Johnny Gaudreau got hit in the head hard by Leo Komarov‘s shoulder, but after reviewing it, and taking into factor of the height difference between the two players, there was no call on the ice and no hearing for Komarov after.

I agree with the latter, I don’t think there should be a hearing because it was a legal hit. His feet remained on the ice and he didn’t reach up to try to hit his shoulder in his face. However, it was still a dirty hit, I mean it’s a shoulder to the face, I’m not exactly sure why the Flames didn’t go on the powerplay for that. Even if it wasn’t intentional, it’s still a shoulder to the face. Even Flames head coach, Glen Gulutzan mentioned how he doesn’t know why that wasn’t a penalty on Komarov.

But again, it wasn’t the hit itself that made me frustrated. I mean, yes I was frustrated at that. But then, there was speculation that Gaudreau’s stick coming up to hit him from the hit seemed to be the main reason for discomfort for Gaudreau.

I’m sorry, what?

The people who are saying this and agreeing with this are the same people who are defending Komarov’s hit. I get it, when you cheer for a team, it’s hard to see them do any wrong. Any sort of hit or contact is accidental and not intentional. We’re all like this because at the end of the day, it’s hard to avoid bias in sports.

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But can we please get rid of this narrative of blaming the smallest guy on the team who’s clearly a target by other teams? Enough’s enough.