It was a dirty hit. And the kid who took it burned his anger on the one Canadien who had nothing to do with it.
Start with the hit, because that part isn't complicated no matter how the "nothing play" crowd wants to spin it. Danault came across from Connor Bedard's blindside and delivered contact that was high and forceful, enough to spin Bedard around and drop him to the ice. Bedard never saw it coming. It caught him up top, left him bloodied, and the 21-year-old lost it on the spot, shouting "Are you f**ked?!" as he climbed back up.
The defense goes like this: Danault was standing there upright, arms down, not even watching, and Bedard skated into him. A mutual, accidental collision that a zoomed-in clip blew out of proportion. I don't buy it. A veteran defensive forward who's spent his career reading bodies and finishing checks knows exactly where an opponent's eyes are, and exactly how to land a hit on the numbers instead of the jaw. He found that angle on Bedard on purpose.
RatingThe timing makes it look worse, too. Bedard had opened the scoring early, snapping one home from just outside the left circle after Patrick Kane fed him through the neutral zone, his second goal of the season and the only offense Chicago managed all night. He took a penalty on his next shift, Chicago killed it, and on his first shift back, Danault clipped him. That sequence looks like a team deciding its most dangerous player needed a reminder.
The box score shows no penalty against Danault on the play. That settles nothing. Referees miss head contact on the blind side constantly, and a non-call has never been a character reference. If anything, a hit to the head of a star that draws blood and produces zero penalty minutes is its own small embarrassment.
Now the part where Bedard is dead wrong. If you're furious about a blindside shot to the head, the conversation is with the man who hit you. That man was Danault. Bedard instead got into it with Alexandre Carrier, a depth defenseman who had nothing to do with the check, trading cross-checks and nearly dropping the gloves with the wrong Canadien. I get it: he's young, he's bleeding, and the red mist picks the nearest sweater. Understandable and correct are not the same thing.
Escalating with Carrier makes Bedard look like a young captain who let adrenaline choose his target instead of his head, and it hands ammunition to anyone looking to paint him as a crybaby instead of a guy who got cheap-shotted. Chicago, sitting at 3-7-0 after this one, isn't in a position to be wasting its best player's fury on the wrong man.
No hearing, fine, or supplementary discipline has come down as of this writing, and I won't pretend to know what the Department of Player Safety does with it. What I know is what I watched. Danault lined up a kid who couldn't see him and finished high. That's the hit that deserves an answer.
Bedard had every right to be furious. He just spent it on the wrong Canadien.
