Well, before the Wild’s 4-3 loss Dec. 8 at Edmonton was over, a large group of sportswriters were in the media room at Rogers Place, watching the third period play out while writing for a tight deadline.

There also was a large group of longtime hockey folks down there, and the talk was about the game-ending hit Evander Kane had just put on Minnesota defenseman Jonas Brodin.

With Brodin skating to the end boards to retrieve a puck, Kane, trailing, sized up the defenseman and shouldered the veteran blue liner into boards, embellishing the hit with an elbow to the neck that snapped Brodin’s head.

No penalty was called.

“I don’t know how you miss that,” an old-school hockey vet said while chatting with a visiting sportswriter. “These guys get paid 200 thousand dollars a year. If you can’t see that, get a job in the bottling plant.”

The NHL has a problem it is clearly unwilling to address. The league wants to promote the breakneck pace and heretofore unseen skill in a sport that has never been more exciting, but it’s loath, it appears, to completely break with its tradition of deliberate, dangerous violence.

The Wild and their fans know this as well as any. Brodin, one of the NHL’s best defensemen, hasn’t played since hobbling off the ice in Edmonton, on long-term injured reserve with an injury to his right arm.

After Kane’s hit, Edmonton color analyst Louie DeBrusk, who played 11 seasons in the NHL, initially called it “borderline.” After seeing the replay, he said, “I’ve gotta tell you, that’s the kind of hit they want to take out of the game, to be totally honest with you.”

Apparently not.

On Saturday, Wild star Kirill Kaprizov was knocked out of a 4-2 loss at Winnipeg by a couple of illegal cross checks to his lower back from Jets defenseman Brenden Dillon. Kaprizov, who reacted to the second as if he’d been tased, missed Sunday’s rematch at Xcel Energy Center, a 3-2 Minnesota loss, and it’s unclear when he’ll be able to return.

For the record, cross checking — when a player holds the stick shaft with both hands to check an opponent — is against NHL rules. It happens all the time, but it’s illegal.

The message the NHL is sending is clear: For the most part, there is no negative consequence for dirty play — sometimes quite literally, as in the case for Kane and Dillon, often because a suspension and/or fine means little in a league with an average player salary of $3 million.

For some reason, it’s open season on Kaprizov. One of the NHL’s best forwards, and once again Minnesota’s points leader, Kaprizov missed almost the entire last month of the 2022-23 season after being drilled into the ice by Winnipeg defenseman Logan Stanley, who was assessed a 2-minute minor and no supplemental discipline. Kaprizov returned for two regular-season games and a first-round playoff series loss to Dallas, but was clearly not himself in those eight games.

Both plays were dirty, neither was penalized on the ice, and given the opportunity to address the plays after video review, the NHL declined. Brodin has missed 10 games and counting; Kaprizov, at best, was missing for an important head-to-head meeting.

What a bargain for Central Division rivals Winnipeg and Edmonton.

Players tend to say they need to police games themselves, and it’s true. In fairness to on-ice officials, NHL hockey is the world’s fastest team sport, and even four guys — two of them linesmen — can easily miss things like Dillon’s cross checks, which came after the play.

For the Kane hit, as stated previously, there was no excuse.

The problem with players policing the ice is it doesn’t necessarily work. A look at recent NHL discipline reveals a one-game suspension for Columbus defenseman Erik Gudbranson, who absolutely mugged Florida’s Nick Cousins in a Dec. 10 game. Gudbranson appears out of line until you see the boarding hit he took from Cousins earlier in the game.

Ryan Hartman tried to stand up for Brodin by starting a fight with Kane, who not only didn’t accept, flopped. Hartman was sent to the box, and Edmonton scored the winning goal on the ensuing power play.

The NHL tends to address the unimpeachably egregious stuff, like Chris Simon hitting Ryan Hollweg in the face with his stick (in retaliation, he later told the Pioneer Press, for being boarded and ultimately concussed) or, more recently, Detroit’s David Perron cross-checking Ottawa’s Artem Zub in the head on Dec. 11. And it works. That stuff is rare.

Maybe because the NHL’s elders feel it’s part of the game’s legacy, the league refuses to send a clear message about the day-to-day garbage play. Why? Because, for whatever reason, it doesn’t want to.

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