On Matt Martin’s Hit that Injured Keith Ballard

Tuesday’s game was marred by a scary hit to Wild defenseman Keith Ballard, in which he lost consciousness, suffered multiple face fractures, suffered a concussion, and may require surgery. Wild fans have been upset since the hit took place that there was no penalty and, as we learned today, there will be no suspension for Matt Martin who delivered the hit on Ballard.

The explanation given, via the Star Tribune’s Michael Russo, was that Ballard turned his back toward Martin in order to avoid the check at a point when Martin was too close to the hit to pull up. Once a player turns in this kind of situation he takes responsibility for the hit that’s coming.

Here’s the blurb from Russo’s blog post on the topic:

"I am told no discipline for Matt Martin. I think it was a needless, reckless hit, but often in this case, when a player turns to dodge a check the way Ballard did, the onus is now on him and that turn at last second is viewed as contributing to the incident and injury. I still feel it was a run and late, but the fact Martin looks to escape discipline doesn’t surprise me. The league, which has the technology that I don’t, says the hit was .5 seconds late. .7 or more is considered late, as I wrote in last month’s Department of Player Safety feature here. It’s also not considered a charge, I’m told, because he comes off the ice after contact and rides up Ballard."

So, on a couple of technicalities and by virtue of the fact that Ballard tries to avoid being run over, Martin will not be suspended or even have a hearing.

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Here’s the problem: This was a reckless play on Martin’s part. The idea of suspensions is that the league punishes dangerous plays that can seriously injure players. The Department of Player Safety’s motto says as much, beginning, “We are committed to making the game as safe as possible for our players.”

This hit would likely have seriously injured Ballard whether or not he attempted to protect himself from the hit. With the distance between his positioning and the boards and the speed Martin had gained skating from a long ways away in order to deliver the check it’s likely that Ballard was going to have his head driven into the boards either way.

By attempting to protect himself he exonerates the checker in the eyes of the league nearly automatically, it seems. Except the the Department of Player Safety, in previously addressing head movement just prior to contact, has made a point of not suspending a player when the checked player moves their head as long as the preceding check was a “routine legal body check.”

There’s a lot of space between Ballard and the boards here, but he’s close enough that if he’s hit in this position he’s likely to get boarded. It doesn’t look like, if Ballard doesn’t turn away, this would be a “routine legal body check.”

If the play was going to be dangerous it seems to work against the stated purpose of the Department of Player Safety to not evaluate the hit outside of the realm of whether or not a player attempt to protect themselves from the hit by turning away from the oncoming check.

Updates on Ballard’s status are slowly coming out from the team and they aren’t good (all of GPW wishes him a speedy recovery).

While I do believe this was a dangerous check whether or not Ballard turns, it does seem that his injuries are far worse because of the turn. Seeing updates like these on a player from your team can make fans get riled up. It’s probably important to remember, if you’re getting worked up about this, that a Martin suspension doesn’t do the Wild any good. This is more about seeing precedents for who to protect players while not making the game slow or overly cautious. The injury is gruesome and terrible, but the extent of the injury is the result of the turn. This isn’t a Shawn Thornton situation, but it was a dangerous play that would have been boarding had Ballard not turned.

I can accept that the league wants to take a firm stand on its policies as far as a late hit — even if the difference between .5 and .7 seconds seems to indicate when the puck leaves his stick and Ballard was clearly dumping the puck to any eyes before the puck left his stick, which indicates a bit of gray zone in that guideline. I can also accept the ruling on charging here — that one makes sense to me, Martin leaves his feet, but doesn’t drive upward and leaving his feet appears to be partially the result of expecting impact in a place where Ballard ultimately was not at any longer. (Also, there is nothing in the Russo explanation about the contact to the head from Martin, but I assume that this falls under the portion of that explanation that puts the onus on Ballard for turning away from the check. There’s no way to know if Martin would have made contact with Ballard’s head directly had Ballard not moved.)

But the danger of the play — Martin not letting up even though Ballard is an unsafe distance from the boards and is clearly dumping the puck — seems clear either way and that is what should at least have a hearing for a player who has been suspended previously for charging. (Martin was also suspended previously for punching an unsuspecting Max Talbot in the head from behind.) The play should not be fully judged in this instance based on the reaction of the player being hit.

If the league would like to take a hard line stance on this hit, then they also need to acknowledge that the guidelines or policies in place that led to the dismissal of this hit maybe need a review. This seems to clearly be a dangerous play. (Adam Proteau of The Hockey News agrees, Russo called it “needless” and “reckless.”) This was a reckless hit. It was going to injure Ballard no matter what he did to protect himself. That means that the onus should be placed on the attacking player.

Attempting to protect yourself does not excuse what happened on Martin’s part. He doesn’t need to be strung up and flayed, he’s not a bad person, it doesn’t look like he had any intent to injure here, he’s not a dirty player (four years since his last suspension — you can’t both defend Matt Cooke and think that Martin hasn’t cleaned up his game), but the league needs to implement discipline when player’s safety is at risk due to the intent of the play, if the safety of players is a concern at all.

Watch the hit here: