The Helmet Throw: One Year Later

There are few moments in sports that can genuinely be looked upon as watershed. One such moment occurred a year ago today at Madison Square Garden.

The New York Rangers were in the midst of a stretch of games which saw them drop four of their last five, and were trailing the Chicago Blackhawks 3-0 late in the second period. The only reason the margin wasn't larger was because the Blackhawks were too inept to take advantage of the Blueshirts lackluster effort.

Jacob Trouba had seen enough. The first-year captain decided to take matters into his own hands, or should I say shoulder. He delivered a crunching open-ice hit on Andreas Athanasiou that led to several fighting majors, including one on Trouba.

But it was what he did on his way to the locker room that raised so many eyebrows. He threw his helmet towards the Rangers bench and screamed at his teammates to "wake the fuck up!" 

Sadly, his words fell on deaf ears. The Rangers would go on to lose 5-1, dropping their record to a woeful 11-10-5. The season was hanging in the balance.

It was not until their next game against the St. Louis Blues that the full impact of Trouba's gesture began to take hold. Trailing 4-3 heading into the third period, the Blueshirts scored three straight goals to pull out the first of what would be seven consecutive wins. The Rangers wound up going 36-12-8 post helmet, and even though they lost to the New Jersey Devils in the first round of the playoffs, Trouba has been rightly credited with saving the season.

There are those who say that the 6-3, 210 pound defenseman is overpaid for what he does; that the Rangers would've been better off putting the $8 million they pay him towards other needs. I respectfully disagree. True, Trouba does occasionally turn the puck over, sometimes at the most inopportune time; and his offense, since his first season in New York, is highly overrated.

But the intangibles he brings to the table are undeniable. In a league where the only physical contact between players typically involves a high stick to the face or a cross check to the back, Trouba is a throw back to an era where players routinely took the body and weren't intimidated so easily. 

His hits, despite the chirping from the cheap seats, are always clean and on target. He is a leader both inside and outside the locker room. There is not a single player on the Rangers who doesn't look up to him, and not a single player on virtually every team in the NHL that doesn't keep his head up a bit more when he's on the ice.

If that isn't respect, I don't know what is. 

To the nerds who run the analytics departments across the league, Trouba may seem like a luxury; to the millions of fans who watched him throw his helmet in that game against the Blackhawks a year ago, we know better.

And so do his teammates.