“I think if anyone’s ever been hit in that spot, they know it doesn’t feel good and it hurts for a while,” said Canucks RW Brad Marchand of the above groin shot. That’s a good while after the fact—whatever he said in that frozen crumpled heap would probably be either unintelligible or unprintable. For the uninitiated, Marchand is, in hockey jargon, a pest—someone who purposefully annoys players on the opposite team, up to the limit of (and at times, outside of) the official rules.

Marchand, like other pests, must have a certain level of competency with respect to the usual hockey objectives, but that requirement is secondary to his ability to get in the heads of his opponents. And according to ESPN, Marchand acknowledged that he did indeed say something to Brandon Prust that could have set him off. In other words, he understands that some days you get the groin shot and some days you give it. That’s just hockey.