Should Evander Kane be suspended for high-sticking Tyler Myers, and will NHL DoPS be consistent after McDavid-Soucy incident?

By Cole Shelton

Modified May 15, 2024 16:48 GMT

The Edmonton Oilers' Evander Kane had a four-minute penalty for high-sticking Vancouver Canucks defenceman Tyler Myers in the face. Kane was cross-checking Myers when his stick got up and hit the defenceman in the face.

Although Myers was bleeding and Kane was handed a four-minute penalty, a suspension doesn't seem likely.

It doesn't seem like Kane was trying to hit Myers in the face on purpose, and it wasn't as malicious as Carson Soucy's cross-check to Connor McDavid's face, which resulted in a game suspension.

Although it is similar in the fact a player cross-checked to the face, it wasn't as bad as Soucy's on McDavid. Instead, it is more similar to Nikita Zadarov's cross-check on McDavid and Zach Hyman's cross-check to Zadarov, which both resulted in no suspensions, although Tocchet called for one to be made.

"It's a scrum. Z got cross-checked by Hyman after. I think there's a couple of incidents that George (Parros) and them are looking at right now."

Currently, the NHL Department of Player Safety has yet to announce any possible punishment for Evander Kane and it appears he will be in lineup for Game 5 on Thursday.

Evander Kane records an assist on the game-winner

To add some salt to the wound for Canucks fans is the fact that Evander Kane assisted Evan Bouchard's game-winning goal with less than 40 seconds in Game 4.

After Vancouver stormed back from down 2-0 in the third period to tie the game, the Oilers scored with less than a minute to go in a goal that Tocchet was not happy about.

“I’m disappointed. There are too many soft plays on that (third) goal, four or five plays. You have to dig in there,” Tocchet said, via NHL.com. “I thought we had four or five guys make mistakes on that goal. You can’t do that. We’ve been a resilient group all year, but we need five or six guys to get going. This is the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Game 5 of the series is set for Thursday at 10 p.m. ET in Vancouver with the series now tied 2-2.