Sources: NHL won’t discipline Rangers’ Trouba

New York Rangers defenseman Jacob Trouba will not receive any supplemental discipline for his hit on Montreal Canadiens defenseman Justin Barron, sources told ESPN.

In the third period Tuesday with the Rangers leading 5-2, Barron carried the puck along the boards into New York’s zone. As Barron passed to a teammate, Trouba walloped him with a hard check that dropped the Montreal player.

Canadiens defenseman Mike Matheson skated over for a brief tussle with Trouba, earning an instigator penalty on top of the five minutes for fighting both players received.

Barron was helped from the ice to the trainers’ room. Trouba was not penalized for the hit, but the Canadiens and many of their fans on social media believed he should be disciplined by the NHL Department of Player Safety.

“They had a clean hit on the ice, we have a hit to the head from a player that’s had multiple, multiple warnings,” Canadiens forward Brendan Gallagher said, according to The Athletic. “So, whether the league decides to do the right thing, whether he gets another pass, that’s up to them.”

Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis believed that “the first point of contact was the head” on Trouba’s hit.

Upon review by the NHL, it was determined that Trouba’s hit was a legal full body check with Barron’s chest as the main point of contact. If there was contact with Barron’s head, that contact was covered under Rule 48.1, which considers “whether the player attempted to hit squarely through the opponent’s body and the head was not ‘picked’ as a result of poor timing, poor angle of approach, or unnecessary extension of the body upward or outward.”

Trouba, 30, is one of the NHL’s most scrutinized physical players. Though the majority of his injurious checks have been deemed legal by on-ice officials and the Department of Player Safety, Trouba has been suspended twice in his NHL career and fined four times — most recently in the 2024 Eastern Conference finals for elbowing Florida Panthers forward Evan Rodrigues.

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