Canadiens forward Jake Evans avoided a trip to the hospital and was improving Thursday morning under supervision from team doctors, head coach Dominique Ducharme said, after Evans was concussed on an illegal check by Winnipeg Jets center Mark Scheifele on Wednesday night.
“He’s certainly going to miss time, we’re not sure how much time,” Ducharme said, confirming the concussion diagnosis.
Evans was stretchered off the ice in the final minute of Montreal’s 5-3 win in Game 1 of the second-round series after he was hit high by Scheifele, who was given a five-minute major for charging and a game misconduct.
Scheifele will have a telephone hearing with the NHL on Thursday. The maximum suspension for a phone hearing is five games.
His hit came as Evans, playing on his 25th birthday scored a wrap-around goal on an empty net with 57 seconds left to put the Canadiens ahead 5-3. Asked after the game to qualify the hit in one word, Ducharme said, “Useless.”
Ducharme added on Thursday, “When a player approaches a player like yesterday and doesn’t try to get his stick on the puck, that’s an indication of the intent, to me.”
The hit immediately drew the ire of Evans’ teammates, and a scrum broke out along the boards where Evans was laying on the ice. Jets winger Nikolaj Ehlers used his body to shield Evans from the players who were fighting.
“I was just trying to keep everyone away from him,” Ehlers said after the game. “In a situation like that, you don’t want anyone falling on top of him. I was just trying to keep everyone away.”
“I’d like to recognize what Nik Ehlers did protecting Jake from that scrum,” Ducharme said Thursday. “I know him well, I coached him for two years, I appreciate what he did.”
“It was a dirty hit,” Canadiens defenseman Joel Edmundson said after the game. “But the league’s going to take care of it. If he (Scheifele) gets back in the series, we’re going to make his life miserable.”
Jets coach Paul Maurice acknowledged it was a “heavy, heavy hit.”
“We’ve all played this game long enough,” said Canadiens winger Brendan Gallagher. “Scheif knows better than that. I know him. I don’t want to comment too much. We’re just told to let the league handle it. We trust that they will.
“It’s brutal. It didn’t need to happen. It’s the wrong play. He knows better.”
Canadiens defenseman Jeff Petry added Thursday that the team’s focus will be on getting retribution on the scoreboard.
“The best way to get back at them for that is to win the series,” Petry said. “Our focus is to make sure we’re playing the right way, the way we’ve played the last three games and make them pay that way.”
