While it’s not quite the dog days of the season, the initial glow of a new season has worn off a little, and storylines are getting a little harder to find. So, leave it up to the fine folks over at The Athletic to give the fans a little something to chit-chat about. Nothing like a players’ poll about the Most Punchable Faces in the NHL to start a discussion.
The website polled 107 players around the league and released the results on Tuesday. Much to the shock of some, the Tkachuk brothers didn’t split the vote (Matthew finished with 10.3% of the vote and Brady received just one vote, boo). The winner, by a wide margin, was Ottawa’s Nick Cousins, who garnered 26 votes (24.3%).
"I can't stand him. I heard he's a good guy, but I'd still love to punch him in the face,” is how one unnamed player put it.
Somewhat surprisingly, a member of the Minnesota Wild appeared on the list. Tied with Conor Garland at 4.7% was Joel Eriksson Ek. The veteran forward picked up 5 votes from his fellow NHLers.
Somewhat surprisingly, according to the writers, “most” of the votes came from his own teammates.
“If he wasn’t on my team, probably Ekker,” is how one of the players put it.
The Swedish forward hasn’t gone out of his way to get clocked in the kisser. In 574 career games with Minnesota he has yet to be booked by the officials for a fight during a game. In fact, he doesn’t have a major penalty on his record at all. He does have a 10-minute misconduct call, though. It came in a game against Montreal where he also had two goals.
Of course, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t get punched in the face on the ice. His forecheck-heavy style of play doesn’t exactly endear him to opponents, and there is at least one documented case of him getting hit in the face during the run of play.
How can someone want to punch this face?