Fans would not be wrong in their assessment that hockey is a game that provides many opportunities to humiliate your opponent. The game allows hitting, fighting, and any type of goal celebration. That being said, no move boils the blood of opposing players and fans alike as much as a hard-hit slap shot from feet away on an empty net. University of Minnesota women’s hockey player Abbey Murphy got a taste of the backlash when she lined up and hammered a shot on an untended net on Saturday night.
The number-four ranked Golden Gophers took on number-eight Minnesota-Duluth on Saturday for the final game of their regular season. The rivals played a hard-fought game. Minnesota maintained an early lead through two periods, and despite Minnesota-Duluth clawing back, the Golden Gophers led 3-2 with 1:66 left in the third. Hoping for a late equalizer, Minnesota-Duluth pulled their goalie, opening the doors for Murphy, a UMinn junior, to skate in on a breakaway, slapping the team’s final goal into the empty net.
Minnesota-Duluth did not like this and alternate captain Clara Van Wieren quickly took matters into her own hands, skating up and cross-checking Murphy.
While there is no rule barring players from brazenly slap-shotting a puck into an empty net feet away from the goal line, the act has been in the news following an incident where Ottowa Senators forward Ridly Greig got cross-checked in the head following his own empty netter slap shot.
Toronto Maple Leafs defender Morgan Rielly took Greig’s goal personally, and was suspended five games cross-checking him in the face. The goal sparked a national conversation over who was in the wrong between Rielly and Greig, and we assume Minnesota and Minnesota-Duluth are hashing out the same argument right now.
Rielly appealed the league’s punishment in an attempt to lessen his suspension. After his hearing with Gary Bettman, the NHL commissioner had a simple response. He described the way the goal was scored before the cross check as “utterly irrelevant.”
“I didn’t convince them of anything,” Rielly said.
In his ruling on the Morgan Rielly suspension appeal, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman makes it clear that Ridly Greig's slapshot into the empty net before Rielly's cross-check was "utterly irrelevant." pic.twitter.com/9Rbz43k8s4
— Chris Johnston (@reporterchris) February 20, 2024
Sean McIndoe, senior NHL writer for The Athletic, recently broke down this “unwritten rule” along with many others, and this is what he came up with.
And I do think a lot of this stuff falls into the category of ‘if you don’t like it, don’t get scored on.’ That said, it does seem like there’s a reasonable line to be drawn somewhere, and that stepping over that line could be expected to draw a reasonable response. That doesn’t mean a cross-check to the head, but it would mean something.
While Van Wieren only faced a two-minute minor for her sizably less vicious cross check, the mirroring instances beg an ever present question: should scoring an empty-netter like that be two minutes for trolling?
