Earlier this week, Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman Mikhail Sergachev suffered a gruesome injury after taking a reverse hit from New York's Alexis Lafreniere, which sent Sergachev falling awkwardly back onto his own leg, breaking his left tibia and fibula, resulting in emergency surgery. Here's the hit in question:
"Most people in the hockey community, especially the general managers, generally don't like the reverse hit. Yes, I understand, it's a grey area, and the general managers have talked about it before. It's more the reverse hit below the goal line or in a skating situation.
Should it be something that the NHL should crack down on, as they have on slashing or on cross-checking? What I can tell you is the reverse hit has been discussed at the GM level in the past and, undoubtedly, it will be high on the agenda when they meet again in Florida in March." - Darren Dreger on a potential rule change coming in relation to reverse hits
The biggest issue with these types of hits is simply that the player coming in to finish a routine check doesn't have any means of bracing himself for a reverse hit that he doesn't see coming. It's become fairly commonplace for players on the receiving end of a reverse hit to suffer some sort of an injury, though it's not always as serious as the one suffered by Sergachev this week.
As it stands, Sergachev has not yet been ruled out for the season, but it certainly appears as though, given the nature of his injury, that he'll miss the rest of the 2023-24 season.
