Leon Draisaitl claims knocking away Jacob Trouba stick was self defense
The New York Rangers finally snapped a three game losing streak by beating the Ottawa Senators on Wednesday night. However, there’s still some hoopla over an incident involving Leon Driasaitl and Jacob Trouba.
In Saturday’s stunning 4-3 loss to the Edmonton Oilers, Draisaitl was skating back to his bench after scoring the go-ahead goal and angrily knocked the stick out of an unsuspecting Trouba’s hands.
Trouba wisely kept himself in check and chose to ignore the childish act in order to not put the Rangers down a man again with 2:02 remaining. It was a one goal game and let’s face it, the Oilers aren’t known for defense. A penalty there and the storyline would’ve been how the Blueshirts captain couldn’t control himself costing his team a chance to salvage a point.
Leon Draisaitl on Jacob Trouba stick incident
After the loss, and thanks to the Oilers social media team poking some fun on the stick swipe, there’s been a lot of focus on the incident.
Somehow the Rangers inability to hold multi-goal leads and Trouba not going bonkers over his stick being knocked out of his hands are connected. All that ails the Rangers can be captured in this moment.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
During TNT’s broadcast, Leon Draisaitl jokingly dismissed the incident with a tongue in cheek response on what happened.
“I was just trying to defend myself there last game,” Draisaitl laughed. “I thought it was right in my way. I just tried to get it out of the way.”
Haha, very funny.
Watching the video several times, you see Jacob Trouba made a mental note of what Draisaitl did. He clearly gets the numbers of the player that disrespected him.
On another note, even if the score were a little more lopsided there’s no given Trouba would’ve done anything because he’s obviously playing through an injury he’d rather not aggravate in a tussle.
I’ll simply add this, the New York Rangers play the Oilers again on February 17 in Edmonton. They will have payback on their minds for the loss, but I’ll bet Trouba will be looking for Draisaitl to cross the tracks at some point in the game.
If he does, the #8 Train will be right on time.
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