Our Flyers friends over at Broad Street Hockey might want to update this little graphic after tonight. We’re three weeks deep into the newest hockey season and Philadelphia might be looking at its third suspension of the season after Brayden Schenn collided with Brendan Smith on a high hit.
It looks bad at first glance, especially since Smith left the ice immediately after, though he has returned for the third period. Still, it’s an awkward looking play.
Schenn did not intend to do this, BTW. Was clearing trying to jump out of the way. Still, he's on the hook for this. It's reckless. pic.twitter.com/7MHpStUhDK
— Kyle M. (@KyleWIIM) November 3, 2016
It definitely seems like Schenn wasn’t intentionally going after Smith’s head, especially since the puck takes a strange deflection off the stick of the Red Wing defenseman. It’s hard to tell exactly what Schenn's line of thinking was when making that jump, but the slowed-down version makes the hit seem more awkward and accidental than malicious.
Considering the Flyers have already had a pair of suspensions within the first month of the season, and Schenn himself sat out the first three games thanks to a hit against T.J. Oshie in last season's playoffs, it wouldn’t be surprising at all to see some supplemental discipline for sheer recklessness. Yet with Smith making a return in the third period, it could be nothing at all.
We’ll see how the Department of Player Safety feels about that hit pretty soon, though.