Listen to Clay Travis explain why he finds it incomprehensible that the NHL still ‘allows’ fighting to occur on the ice, referring to Washington Capitals superstar Alexander Ovechkin knocking out 19-year-old Russian countryman Andrei Svechnikov at the end of Washington’s Game 3 defeat to the Carolina Hurricanes on Monday night.
Svechnikov suffered a concussion during the brawl, after being briefly knocked unconscious by a punch to the chin from Ovechkin that caused the 19-year-old to hit his head on the ice. Svechnikov is unlikely to suit up in Thursday’s Game 4 and it is still unknown what Ovechkin’s punishment will be.
Clay thinks it’s absurd that we have a professional sport that still allows such thuggery and goonery and wonders why Ovi is considered such a hero for the now viral KO, when if Kevin Durant had done the same thing to Patrick Beverley, he would be suspended for the rest of the postseason and villainized for the rest of his career.
Check out the full audio below as Clay believes someone is going to die on the ice at some point and says that combat is obviously an integral part of violent sports like MMA or boxing, but literally serves no rational purpose in the NHL... Especially when the punishment is laughably a five minute penalty.
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