Mika may never have been much of a checker, but he is a big guy (and used to play around 220lbs) who was not afraid of contact and using his body to protect the puck or separate an opponent from it. That doesn’t have to be a “hit” but…
In NY, so same score keepers, etc. he was racking up 134 hits in 82 games back in 2019/20ish. That’s like 1.6 hits per game. This year he is on pace for 29 hits (about .4). Last year he registered 49 (a little over .5). The year before it was 71 (about .85) Before that it was 75 in 57 games (over 1.25). There’s a trend.
He has clearly developed an allergy to even MAKING contact, let alone delivering a hit. He’s becoming more averse to any type of contact each year. A guy like Mika doesn’t need to be lining people up, but in order to resemble the player he was when he was highly successful he has to understand that using his size and strength to shield the puck or push a defender off of it is still necessary.
He was never Lindros, but (22-23’s) 39 goals, 91 points, 71 hits in 82 games is still a dramatically different player than 8 goals, 27 points, 15 hits in 42 games. And even though 71 hits in 82 games isn’t a lot, it’s still more than double the current pace. Interestingly, the production is also nearly 1/2. He’s not engaging and he’s not Panarin or Hughes or Kane who can dance around avoiding contact, so he better figure out where he keeps his man bits, reinstall them and get back to playing in the trenches a bit.
I don’t care if he hits, but he’s 31 years old and he’s been avoiding contact since he turned maybe 28? It’s unacceptable. Go push somebody. Go find the other teams’ Fox or Hughes or other smallish defender and use your size. He’s a good skater. Go combine your skating and your size and make some 5’10 defender’s life miserable for a night. You may even enjoy it and gain some confidence from it. Right now Mika would rather duck a hit from 5’7 Zuccarello than laugh and let him bounce of him. Go play soccer then, maybe you can draw a yellow card. Hockey is never not going to have a bare minimum physicality to it, so unless you’re in the .1% of shifty, slippery stick handlers in the world, you’re going to have to come to terms with that.
Another way of putting it, in 890 career games he has laid 1,052 hits. In his last 205 games he’s registered 135 hits. Which means in the 685 games prior he’d registered 917.
And it isn’t even “hitting” that’s important in this case, but if the numbers have lowered that considerably, imagine how much weaker on puck protection and in pursuit of gaining possession he has become.
