Aaron Dell may have taken the notion that goalkeepers rarely take penalties a little too far, and Drake Batherson paid the price.
During Tuesday’s game against the Ottawa Senators, the Sabres goalie left the puck behind his net for one of his teammates, and to protect him from the onrushing Batherson, Dell took Buffalo culture to heart and drove the Sens forward onto the defensive.
As TSN’s Mike Johnson said on the show, getting in the way of a puck handler and forechecker like Dell did is exemplary obstruction. To make matters worse, Batherson did not return to the game after his collision with the boards, and Ottawa coach DJ Smith said after his team’s 5-0 win that the 23-year-old would be out long-term.
And the icing on the cake is that Batherson was supposed to travel to Las Vegas next week for his first All-Star weekend.
DJ Smith says Drake Batherson will be out for a while (no set timetable) and confirms it is an ankle injury.
Says: “It’s too bad that young boy can’t go to the All-Star game. That’s ridiculous.”
– Ian Mendes (@ian_mendes) 26 January 2022
“It definitely hurts,” Senators captain Brady Tkachuk said after the game“It definitely sucks. Honestly, it was just bullshit. What happened was unnecessary and dirty. You just feel for (Batherson). He put in so much work to get to where he is. It definitely sucks.”
Dell will have a hearing with the NHL’s Department of Player Safety to determine if he will be suspended.
This is nothing new for the 32-year-old goalkeeper.
“I didn’t know anything about it, but after I came in I saw replays of him running out and attacking players. And you know it’s a pattern,” Smith said, via The Athletic. “It’s a bad move by the goalkeeper. And he’s done it before.”
Although he has only played in 126 NHL games, as the Senators coach mentioned, a pattern is already emerging: Dell sees himself as a sixth player and does not hesitate to take out some opposing players.
It’s something you just don’t see, and even though there is rarely an official rule for a goalkeeper hitting a field player, the recipient doesn’t see it coming.
“I don’t like to call other goalies, but they don’t expect to get hit by a goalie. Just like you can’t hit a goalie when he comes out to play the puck,” Ottawa goalie Matt Murray said. “I just thought it was a dangerous play that turned out to be a really unfortunate outcome.”
Dell gave the standard answer to justify this.
“I just wanted to buy my defender some time and get in (Batherson’s) zone. I hope he’s OK. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” he said.
Batherson scored his 13th goal and 34th point of the season before being clotheslined by the opposing goalie.
For entertainment purposes, we won’t have to wait long before these two clubs face each other again, as they play their last head-to-head match of the season on February 17th.
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