Brandon Carlo ruled out for game after head-hunting hit from Washington’s Tom Wilson
Tom Wilson #TomWilson
In the empty TD Garden, the sounds were clearly heard from the Level 9 press box. The crunch of Brandon Carlo against the glass. The silence after players realized he was in trouble. The shouts from the Bruins bench.
At Tom Wilson:
“You’re a [expletive] scumbag.”
“[Expletive] headshot.”
At the officials, who kept their arms at their sides while the pile cleared:
“[Expletive] brutal!”
From Bruce Cassidy, at an official who told him there was no penalty coming: “He’s going to get five games! For sure it’s a [expletive] penalty!”
Wilson, widely considered to be the game’s dirtiest player, lived up to that reputation with a head-hunting hit on Carlo late in the first period of Friday’s game. With the Bruins up, 1-0, and 1:28 left before intermission, the Capitals winger steamed into the corner as Carlo played the puck, using his gloves and elbows to drive Carlo’s head and shoulders into the boards from less than a foot away.
The Bruins defenseman grabbed his head and crumpled to the ice, taking a couple whacks from Washington winger Jakub Vrana on the way down. Carlo remained face-down for about a minute, and gingerly made his way to the room. He was ruled out for the rest of the game with an upper-body injury.
It is stunning that a player with Wilson’s reputation wasn’t tagged with a penalty for such a predatory play, but as Cassidy heatedly and pointedly said, a suspension is likely coming.
“That was an [expletive] hit,” Brad Marchand said on NESN between periods. “Brando had his head down in the corner and he took a liberty on a guy that was in a vulnerable spot. That’s a cheap shot there. We lost a great player. It is great to see him skate off the ice by himself, but he was obviously in a bad spot and he was hurting. That’s a bad hit.”
A shift before dropping Carlo, Wilson mixed it up with Bruins winger Trent Frederic. Frederic mixed it up with Alex Ovechkin during the team’s game on Wednesday, hitting the Capitals legend with what Washington thought was a dangerous hit and goading Ovechkin to spear him. (That spear earned No. 8 a $5,000 fine from the NHL.)
New Bruin Jarred Tinordi dropped the gloves with Wilson midway through the second period. With Wilson watching from the penalty box, Boston scored three times, the first Frederic tipping home a pass from Charlie McAvoy just 30 seconds later.
Wilson’s rap sheet includes a 2017-18 run in which he was suspended for four preseason games, two regular season games and three playoff games for dangerous hits. In a video explaining his 20-game ban for a headshot on St. Louis’ Oskar Sundqvist, the NHL’s Department of Player Safety’s narrator said it was his “fourth suspension in his last 105 games, an unprecedented frequency of suspensions in the history of the Department of Player Safety.”
He has not been suspended since that Oct. 3, 2018, hit.