Reverse hits: protective or predatory?

Matt Larkin
Matt Larkin(MLarkinHockey)
Reverse hits: protective or predatory?

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Self defense. That is essentially how Cale Makar pitched it when he discussed the art of reverse hitting during a media session leading up to the 2022-23 NHL season.

“I know it’s controversial for some people,” Makar told a group of us at the time. “But, in my opinion, if they’re coming to hit you, why not hit them back?”

But what happens when you can’t say for certain if a player is in fact coming to hit you?

Can we really claim, for instance, that New Jersey Devils center Nico Hischier, proud owner of eight penalty minutes and worthy of Lady Byng Trophy consideration this season, was planning to deliver a thunderous hit from behind on Buffalo Sabres defenseman Rasmus Dahlin Friday night?

We’ll never know, will we? Dahlin hit him too soon for us to find out. But the circumstantial evidence implied otherwise. Hischier’s skates made snow as he slowed his momentum, seemingly looking to avoid contact as he prepared to corral the puck. That was when Dahlin delivered this devastating reverse hit:

No penalty was called on the play…for Dahlin. Hischier, incensed after the hit, started a scrum and ended up receiving a two-minute minor penalty for roughing.

Was Hischier’s anger justified? The reverse hit, at first glance, doesn’t violate anything in the rulebook. As Makar surmised before the season, it’s a defenseman’s way to kill or be killed. Why take a big hit while retrieving the puck when you can catch your unsuspecting opponent with a heavy blow of your own?

The reverse hit arguably isn’t a new concept, either. Peter Forsberg popularized it in the 1990s, surprising anyone who dared hit him when he had the puck on his stick. Some people in the game credit longtime Detroit Red Wings defenseman Niklas Kronwall for being a notoriously effective reverse hitter, but what he did isn’t akin to what we saw Dahlin do. Kronwall would engage a puck carrier by skating backwards into him while his momentum was already aimed at a player who saw him coming. It’s not the same thing as skating one way and suddenly changing your momentum, which is what we’re seeing in the modern version of the reverse hit. Kronwall was a car driving in reverse down an entire street. The reverse hit as I’m referring to it today: driving forward, then suddenly switching to reverse and crashing into a car driving behind you.

Anecdotally, I believe this latter concept of a reverse hit is becoming a problem in the NHL, threatening to do a lot of the same damage it supposedly aims to prevent.

Most of the time today, it’s a defenseman delivering a reverse hit, and it tends to happen when his numbers are facing a forechecker. The implication is that a blueliner is protecting himself from being hit from behind. But is the hit from behind the same threat it was even a decade ago? Or are NHL players already showing signs of cleaning up their play?

The site Icy Data tracks penalties of all types called by season in the NHL, and here’s a snapshot of the boarding (in red, major and minor) and checking from behind majors (in blue) called in the completed seasons between 2010 and last season:

The data trend shows that players are cleaning up their acts in a major way. Boarding calls have plummeted significantly. We’ve only seen three boarding majors handed out this season and zero checking-from-behind penalties according to the data for 2022-23.

So if predatory hits from forecheckers are bordering on extinction: what threat, exactly, is the reverse hit protecting a player from again?

Is the reverse hit such a strong deterrent that it’s playing a role in the decline of boarding and hits from behind? We can’t say for certain. But what I will say is: reverse hits are now policing a problem that seems to have disappeared, and reverse hits themselves are beginning to border on predatory. The Dahlin hit on Hischier is a prime example. It was essentially a blindside to a player who had no expectation of being hit.

Here’s another example of the kind of reverse hit I’m referring to: Michael Matheson of the Montreal Canadiens on Eric Staal of the Florida Panthers earlier this season. Matheson earned a $5,000 fine for interference on this one:

The more I see the reverse hit, the more I think it qualifies as interference almost every time. Let’s sift through a couple relevant components of the lengthy definition of interference, Rule 56.1 in the NHL rulebook:

Body Position: A player may “block” the path of an opponent provided he is in front of his opponent and moving in the same direction.

So, the reverse hitter in this case is in fact in front of his opponent. But the instant the momentum is launched backward? The reverse hitter is no longer moving in the same direction, is he?

Pick: A “pick” is the action of a player who checks an opponent who is not in possession of the puck and is unaware of the impending check/hit.

The ‘pick’ element of interference is particularly incriminating for reverse hits. In the Dahlin example, he is indeed checking an opponent who is not in possession of the puck and is unaware of the impending check or hit.

It’s right there in the rulebook: a reverse hit is often a form of blindside. Particularly when factoring in that players are no longer hitting from behind according to the trends, we can deduce that many forecheckers are not suspecting a hit when they chase down a defenseman retrieving the puck. So I’ll say it: reverse hits are dirty, full stop. They have the ability to cause major injuries to their victims.

Is there a groundswell of opinion around the NHL suggesting similar sentiment to mine? It’s not a roar, but it’s at least a whisper. It was included as an item of discussion in a breakout room agenda at the NHL GM meetings a couple weeks ago but didn’t generate a ton of momentum, I’m told.

So for now, the reverse hit lives on unless it’s blatantly visible as a form of interference. If I had my way, however: it would be outlawed for its predatory nature.

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