Porter Martone was having the best night of his NHL season when Brandon Hagel caught him high in the third period on Monday. The 19-year-old had scored his first NHL goal, drawn two penalties and spent the evening irritating the Tampa Bay Lightning enough that they had clearly decided to deal with him physically.
Then Hagel, skating back up the ice with Martone tied up and the puck nowhere near them, put an elbow into his head.
The officials called elbowing at 13:33 and sent Hagel to the box for two minutes. Martone was pulled from the game by the concussion spotter and taken to the dressing room for testing, eventually returning to finish the night.
Two minutes was the extent of it, and that’s what has people angry.
“Two minutes only for a clearly intentional elbow is so f*ing annoying. This league will never give a s about head injuries,” one fan wrote.
“How’s that not a major,” another asked, while a third put it more simply: “Drive-by elbow on a rookie.”
Others took aim at how the league approaches these plays at all. “The NHL has no concept of player safety. They only ever penalize the consequence, never the intent,” one wrote.
“You know, if these guys were punished for this stuff it would happen a lot less,” another added.
Has Brandon Hagel been suspended before?
The Department of Player Safety has dealt with him recently enough. Hagel was suspended for Game 3 of Tampa Bay’s 2025 first-round series against Florida after a hit on Aleksander Barkov that drew a five-minute major for interference and knocked the Panthers captain out of Game 2.
READ MORE: The latest Hellebuyck update has made fans even angrier
There’s an irony in the specifics, too. Two games later in that same series, Hagel was himself elbowed in the head by Florida’s Aaron Ekblad, missed the following game, and watched Ekblad receive a two-game suspension for it.
The league can still review any play involving high contact regardless of what was called on the ice, so a hearing remains possible. Nothing has been announced.
Martone, meanwhile, was the clear bright spot in a miserable night for the Philadelphia Flyers, who fell 4-1 to drop to 0-1-3. Hagel added the empty-net goal with seven seconds left.
Read more:
