Following their win Saturday night over the Vancouver Canucks, the Carolina Hurricanes gathered at centre ice for their patented «Storm Surge.» The trend started in 2019 when ‘Canes veteran Justin Williams decided they should do something more fun than the traditional stick salute. It's polarized fans, some love it for the fun aspect, others find it annoying, and Don Cherry called them a «Bunch of Jerks» for doing it, arguing that they were showboating. This only served to encourage them to continue the trend, and the "Bunch of Jerks" moniker stuck.
Last night's celebration included a foot race between Seth Jarvis and Steven Lorentz. The two centres raced a lap around the ice, with Jarvis winning the race with a swan dive across the finish line. As the players rounded the net, they jostled for position, nearly falling into the boards at high speed, and when both Jarvis and Lorentz dove for the finish, Lorentz's face only narrowly missed the skate blade of Jarvis. Had the blade made contact with Lorentz's face, it could have has disastrous, potentially even career-ending or life-threatening consequences.
I'm all for having fun, and admittedly, I've hurt myself doing some extremely stupid things, as I'm sure most of us have. Either of those instances (a hard spill into the boards at high speed or a skate blade to the face/neck) could have easily resulted in serious injury or even death, as we saw with the tragic and unfortunate loss of young Teddy Balkind, who passed away after a skate cut his throat earlier this month.
Hockey players take risks and get injured yes, but this was 2 players taking a huge risk for no reason at all, other than for a few laughs in the locker room. This was too close to a serious and unnecessary injury.
The Storm surge is a fun and unique way of saluting the fans, and there's no reason it shouldn't continue, as long as they make sure they aren't putting their players health at risk doing so.
