Islanders will never hear the end of Scott Mayfield’s crosscheck

Sounds like the NHL’s Department of Player Safety won’t be handing down supplemental discipline to New York Islanders defenseman Scott Mayfield for his first-period crosscheck on Tampa Bay Lightning forward Nikita Kucherov.

ESPN’S Greg Wyshynski confirmed this over Twitter earlier on Thursday.

Which means the Islanders and their fans will never heard the end of this. Especially if the Isles manage to win Game 7 on Friday.

New York Islanders won’t hear the end of the Mayfield missed call

You can already see the outrage about the hit, the lack of penalty on the play, and now the lack of supplemental discipline. And look, yes it’s a penalty. I’ve already detailed that earlier today in my piece about the out of control cross-checking in the series.

But this one play and the fallout from it will be around for a while.

If Nikita Kucherov, who played a full 0:46 last night, can’t play Game 7 and the Bolts lose that game, we’ll hear about this non-call for years. Just like we still hear about how Vincent Trocheck was tripped in the Florida series. Back in 2016.

Or Anders Lee’s “predatory” hit on Washington Capitals center Niklas Backstrom back in the Toronto bubble last year.

All were seen as the moment that lost the series for that team. Neither are true of course. Who knows if Trocheck would have scored if he didn’t fall, or if Florida would have won Game 7 back in Sunrise. And who knows what would have happened to Washington even if they had Backstrom on the roster.

Sure, Mayfield should have been penalized and losing Kucherov is going to be rough for Tampa. But let’s not forget that the Lightning went 36-17-3 with a +34 goal differential without him in the regular season, they are quite capable of winning without Kucherov.

If the Lightning lose this series it won’t be because of the Mayfield play, it will be because they failed to score more goals than the Islanders over four games. Unfortunately that’s not wheat we’re likely going to hear if the Isles make the Stanley Cup finals.