Acciari would never have cheapshotted Slafkovsky if Xhekaj was playing...
It's just a poor trope to say this
First some of our players need to start assuming that on every shift someone is out there to cheap shot them (Slaf, Guhle, Dach, Barron). Evans used to be one of the worst at it, getting crunched every so often but it's no longer an issue lately.
After that you could say that these kind of hits are "inevitable" well you can't evade all of them but you can try to prevent a lot of them (and it's always the same players getting those hits).
Going back to Xhekaj, intimiditation is still part of hockey. Pezz isn't intimidating, Xhekaj is. Him being on the roster doesn't dispense the rest of the players to look out for themselves, it's just preventing more shit escalading.
N.B. it sucks that the rest of the team can't seem to play physical or at least ramp it up when that kind of things happens. Sometimes I think MSL does it on purpose (benching X vs a physical team), to force them to actually fight their own battles rather then relying on 1 guy to be the physical presence of an entire team.
