Colorado Avalanche: Sam Girard and Others Delivers Smashes in Nashville

Matters got chippy between the Colorado Avalanche and Nashville Predators. We got to see a lot of hits — including from unexpected players.

The Colorado Avalanche victory against the Nashville Predators felt so good. It was a 5-0 victory — and none of those goals were empty netters. (Not that there’s anything wrong with those.) With that win, the Avs have now strung together four in a row and slid back into a playoff spot.

Now, as you remember, the Avs and Preds faced each other in the playoffs last season. Matters got chippy between them. I don’t think the two teams hate each other like the Avs hate the Wild, but there’s some definite bad blood between them.

So much so that our tiny Samule Girard, usually so unemotional, laid a wicked hit on the Predators’ captain, Roman Josi. Now, as you well know, though our 20-year-old defenseman bulked up into beefcake stature in the offseason, that just means he’s now 180 pounds soaking wet. The kid is still on the small side.

And, as you know, he’s better-known for his spin-o-rama defensive move which has earned him the nickname La Tornade than for smashing opponents. He does have 39 hits on the season, but the vast majority of them wouldn’t fall into the category of smashes.

Until #39 that is. He smashed Josi so hard the Predators announcers were howling:

Now, to answer the question of whether that was boarding, the rule states that the offending player must “hit or check a defenseless opponent into the boards.” The rule specifies that the play must be “violent,” and the receiving player must be unprepared for contact.

Little Sam Girard got Josi square in the chest. He didn’t even appear to hit Josi that hard — it’s just that the Preds player was only on one leg. And the move wasn’t violent — Josi just fell against the boards.

You can see it a little better here:

Girard did not receive a penalty on the play. Nor should he have.

Now this — this was deserving of a penalty:

For a second there, I thought Mikko Rantanen was going to hogtie Dan Hamhuis. He definitely got away with one there, though Hamhuis did hold onto his stick.

Hamhuis fared less well when he encountered a Z-Smash later in the game:

I don’t know what Nikita Zadorov did — it looks like their legs collided, and Hamhuis dropped like he’d been shot. He left the game and didn’t return.

Now this is an example of boarding:

That was a dangerous play. Nathan MacKinnon had his back to Matthias Eckholm and could have been badly injured. In fact, Eckholm did sit for boarding.

This was the final meeting between the Colorado Avalanche and Nashville Predators. Too bad — things were just getting heated up.