Vegas HC defend Reaves after incident with Avs’ Graves
May 31, 2021, 3:04 PM
Vegas Golden Knights head coach Pete DeBoer has come to the defense of forward Ryan Reaves after an incident that left Colorado Avalanche defenseman Ryan Graves bloodied and laying on the ice for several moments.
On Monday, DeBoer told reporters it was “not hard to defend” Reaves, who was assessed a match penalty and faces discipline from the league over the skirmish, which occurred midway through period three of the Avs 7-1 win over the Golden Knights in Game 1 of their second-round playoff series.
“For me, Ryan Reaves is one of the cleanest tough guys that I’ve seen in the league in my 12, 13 years. He’s consistently a clean, physical player,” DeBoer said. “As far as the incident, I don’t know. That’s in Player Safety.”
DeBoer excused Reaves actions by saying his “gloves never came off” and that “nobody was hurt on the play.”
“Whether they’re going to look at what’s between the lines there and think that there’s something there that maybe I don’t see, that’s their department, not mine,” DeBoer said.
NHL’s Department of Player Safety announced on Monday that Reaves would have a hearing for roughing and unsportsmanlike conduct regarding the incident.
In reaction to DeBoer’s comments on Monday, Avs head coach Jared Bednar said the play was one that he thought was “out of the context of the game.”
“Graves is down and in a vulnerable position, and he just stays on top of him and, obviously, hits him. So, I didn’t like the play,” Bednar said. “But he knows his player. I guess I don’t think that he’s out there trying to injure people on purpose. He’s just got a ruggedness to his game, and it is what it is.
“But in that situation in the game, I just didn’t like it. That’s my opinion on it.”
The incident followed a hit in the second period by Graves that injured Golden Knights forward Mattias Janmark, who left the game and did not return.
DeBoer called the play a “dirty hit” on Monday, saying it sparked an “emotion” in the game that was “hard to get past.”
“It’s hard not to carry that emotion through the rest of the game,” he said.
After the game, Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog said that Reaves was “on a mission to hurt somebody in the third, and that’s what he goes out and does.”
“I don’t think you can call that physicality, to be honest with you,” Landeskog said.
