The NHL logo spun around before locking into place, with a sound effect reminiscent of a cell door locking. The next image on the video was that of the new sheriff in town.
“I’m Brendan Shanahan, the National Hockey League’s senior vice president of player safety …”
Shanahan was 42 years old in 2011. He had retired from a Hall of Fame career two years earlier, taking a job with the NHL. In June 2011, he helped create the league’s first Department of Player Safety. It wouldn’t just hand out suspensions to players but, in a revolutionary move, would show its work through explanatory videos like this one.
As the video showed, defenseman James Wisniewski of the Blue Jackets delivered a high hit on Wild forward Cal Clutterbuck after the horn sounded to end the period in a preseason game on Sept. 24, 2011. The hit was late, intentional and from a repeat offender. But Shanahan noted something else about the hit: Wisniewski had violated Rule 48.1 for an illegal check to the head, a recently added regulation.
Wisniewski was suspended for 12 games. The rest of the league was on notice. Targeting the head-on checks would no longer be tolerated.
“If you’re a great player with great timing, you could still deliver great hits. But targeting the head was something that people wanted out of the game,” Shanahan told ESPN recently, 10 seasons after the Department of Player Safety’s debut.
“It was a hard job and it was thankless. As much as we were getting criticized, we tried to always remember that we were going to make the game safer and make it better.”
Rule 48 still had that fresh-rule smell in 2011. Shanahan’s suspension video was one of the first the department created. It was the first time he used phrases such as “the head is targeted,” “principal point of contact” and “prior history of discipline.”
It would not be the last.
From 2011-12 through 2020-21, there were 80 suspensions for hits that violated Rule 48 in the preseason, regular season and playoffs. It’s the rule on which the Department of Player Safety was built. It’s a rule that was created in an effort to reduce the number of concussions in the league, and one that fundamentally changed the way the game was played in the NHL over the past decade.
“What was borderline before that has become clear that it’s not acceptable in the game. I think the respect factor has grown,” Tampa Bay Lightning captain Steven Stamkos said. “We’ve seen some of the harsher suspensions put in place. I don’t think there’s as much of a gray area for players. We know there are punishments.”
Here’s the story on how the rule came to be, what its impact has been in its first 10 seasons and what comes next.
The impact
George Parros, the current head of the Department of Player Safety, was a winger with the Anaheim Ducks when Rule 48 was introduced. He doesn’t remember it affecting the way he played.
“The only thing I remember was the video that Shanahan and [NHLPA executive] Mathieu Schneider put out and we had to watch it in the locker room. It was kind of funny, to be honest. They were both pretty stiff,” he said.
Parros has led the department since September 2017. In 2017-18, the NHL had only one suspension for an illegal check to the head in the regular season, the lowest total in seven years.
“I feel we’ve fine-tuned the game to a great degree,” Parros said. “A lot of the hits we see are because the game is so fast. Every once in a while, we see something with some intention behind it, but very rarely.”
The number of suspensions has fluctuated since then. It jumped back up to eight regular-season bans in 2018-19, and 12 in total. The biggest season for illegal check to the head suspensions was 2013-14, with 15 in total. The lowest total was four in 2019-20, a season shortened by the COVID pandemic whose playoffs were held inside spectator-free bubbles.
According to Icy Data, which tracks NHL penalties by type, the Ottawa Senators had the most minor penalties for checks to the head from 2010 to ’20 with 34, followed by the Boston Bruins (33) and the Lightning (26).
“We watch over a thousand clips a year in our department. About 150 of those would involve head contact,” Parros said. “If we suspend five or six times a year for an illegal check to the head … you can imagine how many were fine, and how many were in that gray area of what we’re trying to define here.”
Rule 48 has been the basis for several of the NHL’s most significant suspensions, including:
Rule 48 has impacted how penalties are enforced, how suspensions are handed out and how players deliver body checks. Shanahan believes it may have even opened up the game offensively.
“When I watch games now, I see players cutting across the high slot and taking shots on goal, and you don’t see players zeroing in to hit them,” he said. “It’s not necessarily about the rule. It’s because the players wanted that hit out of the game.”
But Stamkos disagreed that enforcement of illegal hits to the head led to braver players in the slot.
“I don’t think that it’s affected guys taking ice in the middle,” he said. “You never think about a guy elbowing you in the head. It just happens.”
There was a time when that would happen with no recourse from the NHL. For decades, hits that targeted the head would end up on VHS highlight tapes rather than in a hearing room. A ban on hits to the head seemed like an improbable suggestion.
“There were probably many reasons for that,” Parros said. “But there are two that I consider most significant: First, our awareness and understanding of the effects of concussions was really accelerating at that time — similar to other sports’ — to such an extent that it adjusted the thinking about such hits in a game, in which the puck-carrier normally is bent forward, somewhat leading with his head.
“Second, any such ban would have been a major change, since all of the people in the NHL at that point had been raised and taught how to hit a certain way. They’d be required to change on a dime, into thinking that what they were doing for 25 years is now illegal.”
Despite those challenges, a movement to ban checks to the head picked up momentum at the end of 2009.
As one NHL source put it: “The David Booth one was so, so horrifying that it really stopped everyone in their tracks.”
The David Booth hit
There are two hits from the 2009-10 season that paved the way to Rule 48. In both cases, the hockey world wanted massive suspensions that the NHL felt its rulebook didn’t support.
The first was delivered on Oct. 24, 2009. The Philadelphia Flyers were hosting the Florida Panthers. David Booth, the Panthers’ leading goal scorer in the previous season, was carrying a puck through the Flyers’ offensive zone. Mike Richards of the Flyers cut across on a backcheck and delivered a hit to Booth’s head. The Panthers forward fell, banging his head on the ice before falling limp. A stretcher was quickly wheeled out onto the rink.
Booth doesn’t remember the hit, nor does he remember his time in the hospital. The recollection seared into his memory is that of waking up in the ambulance that took him from the arena and feeling an overwhelming rush of panic. He didn’t know where he was. His legs and chest were strapped down. He grabbed his team trainer by the collar of his shirt, screaming to get him out of there.
“It was like I was possessed. I was trying to break the seat belts,” Booth told ESPN recently.
He has seen the hit since then, more than a few times. People will cue it up on their phones, play it for him and ask, macabrely, “This you?”
Richards was given a five-minute major for interference and a game misconduct by the on-ice officials. Booth was released from the hospital after one day. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that he “suffered a concussion but no other serious injuries.”
Booth would play six more seasons in the NHL and nine more professionally. But he was never the same after the hit, by his own admission. There were cognitive issues. There was also a nagging hesitancy in his game that never really left due to the devastating nature of the hit.
“It’s human nature to feel like the victim. That something happened that I didn’t deserve to have happen. I think that’s the easy way out, to say it’s Mike’s fault or the league’s fault,” Booth said. “That’s something I want to stay away from. It happened, and it’s unfortunate and it changed the course of my career.”
The incident also changed the conversation in the NHL. There was outrage from the hockey world, seeking supplemental disciplinary justice against Richards. But the hockey operations department, under Colin Campbell, determined that the hit wasn’t punishable under the current rules. For the first time, there was real momentum for a rule change at the November 2009 NHL general managers meetings, which took place soon after the Richards hit.
There had been some conversation about a crackdown on checks to the head through the years. But in many cases, there was nothing on the books that outlawed head contact, so the hits went without supplemental discipline. There were also general managers who would support more penalties for hits to the head. Jim Rutherford, the longtime GM for the Carolina Hurricanes and Pittsburgh Penguins, was an advocate for a total ban on head contact.
What had fundamentally changed about the game, as was evident from the Richards hit, was that defensive players were backchecking harder than they ever had before.
“Back pressure? You never heard of that before,” recalled Ray Shero, who was general manager of the Penguins when the head-shot conversations started. “It was obviously becoming a part of the game, and there wasn’t a lot of time and space [to avoid hits].”
Shero was an advocate for making checks to an opponent’s head illegal.
“I never liked those sorts of hits. It’s part not of the game,” he said.
Ironically, Rule 48 might not have happened without one of his players delivering that sort of hit.
On March 7, 2010, the Boston Bruins were visiting the Penguins in Pittsburgh. In the third period, Boston center Marc Savard collected a pass high in the Penguins zone and fired a quick shot toward the Pittsburgh net. With Savard in a vulnerable position after releasing the puck, Penguins winger Matt Cooke skated by and used his left arm to drill Savard in the head. The Bruins forward twisted to the ice, eerily near the location on the ice where Booth was injured months earlier in Philadelphia. Cooke wasn’t penalized on the play.
Another hit to the head. Another player stretchered off the ice. Another controversy right before the general managers met again.
“Maybe it’s a good thing that the GM meetings are when they are,” Cooke’s teammate, Penguins captain Sidney Crosby, said in the aftermath of the hit. “There’s obviously some confusion as to what’s a good hit and what’s not a good hit. That’s got to be fixed pretty quickly. We’ve seen it time and time again, and we all debate whether it was a good or a bad hit.”
Shero’s plan was to fly to the GM meetings after the Penguins game. Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli was sharing a flight with him to Florida for the conference.
“That was a long ride to the Pittsburgh airport. I think it was 15 minutes before we said anything to each other,” Shero said.
The next morning, there was a long discussion among the GMs about the Cooke hit and whether there was a remedy for it through supplemental discipline. There was a clamor for Cooke to be suspended, from fans, media and players alike.
“The media was talking, and we were talking internally,” said Edmonton Oilers GM Ken Holland, who was then the general manager of the Detroit Red Wings. “You could make the case that it was legal. But all the managers went to that meeting knowing that, because of that hit, we had to make some adjustments to the way the game was being officiated. To make a safer environment, and to protect our players.”
The debate was intense. Lou Lamoriello, then GM of the New Jersey Devils, said that suspending Cooke would be akin to “making something up” because there was no rule covering that hit.
“It was like ‘The Untouchables’ and Al Capone. What, were they going to get Matt Cooke on tax evasion?” recalled Shero, now an advisor to the Minnesota Wild. “There was nothing in the rulebook. There was nothing to have a hearing on.”
By not taking action against Cooke, Campbell forced action from the general managers to finally, and formally, create a rule that could cover hits like those that injured Booth and Savard. Several people involved in those meetings agreed that if Campbell suspended Cooke — which would have been thoroughly popular at the time — it would have been years before a rule that actually covered the incident would have been enacted.
“There is no Rule 48 if he just does what a lot of the people in hockey and media wanted done at the time, which was to just suspend him despite the rulebook,” Shanahan said. “If he suspends Matt Cooke for that hit, then it’s quieter. It goes away. You don’t have this moment where the managers are wondering what they want to do to make the game better.”
What the GMs decided to do was implement a rare in-season rule change. “Beginning with tonight’s games, the NHL will implement a new rule prohibiting a lateral back pressure or blindside hit to an opponent where the head is targeted and/or the principal point of contact,” the league announced on March 25, 2010.
The announcement also stated that the hockey operations department was empowered to review any such hit for the purpose of supplemental discipline — a decision that was popular with the players at the time, in the aftermath of hits like the one delivered to Booth.
Shanahan replaced Campbell as the head of player safety on June 1, 2011. But before that, he helped refine Rule 48.
The tweaking
Rule 48 formally appeared in the NHL rulebook for the 2010-11 season. Illegal checks to the head were now defined: “A lateral or blindside hit to an opponent where the head is targeted and/or the principal point of contact is not permitted.”
The biggest news in the rule’s first iteration was that checks to the head would be subject to a five-minute major penalty and automatic game misconduct, with possible supplemental discipline from the league.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman called the rule change “a fundamental shift” for the league, but cautioned not to have it apply to all situations.
“There are nuanced differences between acts that some people think are similar, but they’re not the same. So you can’t be too willing or too quick to paint what happens on the ice that requires supplemental discipline with too broad a brush,” he said.
The first season of the rule saw six players get suspended specifically for hits to the head: Shane Doan (three games), Joe Thornton (two games), Matt Martin (two games), Tom Kostopoulos (six games), Mike Brown (three games) and Daniel Paille (four games). There were also a handful of fines. The rest of the suspensions involving head contact were categorized as being for elbowing, cross-checking, charging or the lateness of a hit.
The league quickly discovered that referees who had asked for Rule 48 to be implemented were hesitant to enforce it.
“The referees at the time were saying that on the ice in real time it was a difficult call to make. That they would catch more of them if it was a minor penalty, that with a major, because it was a new rule, it was too punitive. They felt the harsher penalty could be through supplemental discipline,” Shanahan said.
In March 2011, Shanahan joined a “blue ribbon panel” of former players turned executives — Rob Blake, Steve Yzerman and Joe Nieuwendyk — to tweak the supplemental discipline process and find ways to broaden Rule 48 to cover other hits to the head.
“The real difficult part at the time was figuring out what was just going to be incidental head contact and what was going to be illegal head contact,” Shanahan said. “It sounds like an easy thing to do. But it was more complicated than that, and we saw that with the tweaks to the rule over the next couple of years.”
In 2011-12, a reworked Rule 48 was introduced. The words “lateral” and “blindside” were removed to widen the application of the rule. The rule stated that the head had to be targeted and the principal point of contact, rather than “and/or.” There was also added language about whether the player taking the hit had put himself in a vulnerable position “immediately prior to or simultaneously with the hit” or if head contact “on an otherwise legal body check” was unavoidable.
“The ‘lateral’ and the ‘blindside’ was not to say that it was OK to hit a guy in the head like that, it’s to say we’re not going to distinguish how a player was hit in the head. It could be any position or any angle,” Shanahan said.
An illegal check to the head was now either a minor penalty or a match penalty, not a major penalty, to make it easier on the officials.
In the first season for both the NHL Department of Player Safety and the revamped Rule 48, the league issued 13 suspensions for illegal checks to the head for a total of 43 games. The 12 games given to James Wisniewski were the most handed out. It was a rule that saw both repeat offenders and star players get suspended.
The rule’s effectiveness was called into question in 2013. Dr. Michael Cusimano, a neurosurgeon from Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital, co-authored a study that claimed Rule 48 didn’t significantly lower concussion rates in the NHL. The study was later used as evidence in a class-action lawsuit brought against the league by a group of former players who claimed the NHL was negligent in its prevention of concussions. The suit was settled in 2018; as part of the settlement, the NHL did not acknowledge any liability for any of the plaintiffs’ claims.
“Part of it’s the way the rule’s written. Part of it’s the way the rule is enforced. Part of it’s the penalties associated with the rule. And part of it is that concussions are also coming from other causes like fighting, that is still allowed,” Cusimano told the Canadian Press in 2013.
The rule continued to be rewritten. For 2013-14, the players requested that “principal point of contact” be changed to “main point of contact” in the rule. The word “targeted” was dropped in favor of “avoidable head contact,” leaving intent out of the mandatory criteria.
“Any time there was something in our language that confused the managers or the players, we would tweak it,” Shanahan said. “To remove ‘targeting’ was meant to suggest that a hit may not have been intentional, but it could be reckless. That a player with no history could have thrown a reckless hit.”
Damian Echevarrieta, vice president of NHL player safety, laughed when recalling this change. “I love Shanny, but he would say things like ‘unintentionally targeted’ and I’d have to tell him that the word ‘target’ has intention in it. You can’t unintentionally target something!” he said.
By 2016, Rule 48 looked much like it does today, emphasizing the illegality of reckless or avoidable hits to the head, while mentioning the nuance of an opponent’s body position when the hit was delivered. The rule makes it clear that if the head is the main point of contact and the contact was avoidable by delivering the hit a different way or not delivering one at all, then it’s an illegal check to the head.
Needless to say, there was a learning curve for all these rule tweaks, and for the rule itself.
The re-education
The last decade saw players, coaches and team executives struggle to understand Rule 48 and its application, especially in early hearings. One person with knowledge of the hearings characterized the typical counterarguments from players and teams as “victim blaming,” as they spoke more about the opponent taking the hit than the hit itself.
“The first couple of years were very difficult,” Shanahan said. “Players and managers would come into the hearings and say, ‘This is a legal hit.’ You have to acknowledge that six months ago, it was. But it’s not anymore. That was a huge shift.”
The videos that the department created helped with the education, although not necessarily for the experienced players in the NHL.
“The videos weren’t for the players in the league at that time. They didn’t even watch them. We were making them for kids that were playing,” Shanahan said.
One of the biggest factors in the player education process was the rookie orientation camps that were started within the past decade. In between sessions with top prospects in which they learn about social media etiquette and receive financial advice, the Department of Player Safety gets them for an hour, and explains the nuances of things like Rule 48. Shanahan hopes they’re already familiar with it.
“The next generation is only about four or five years down the road. These kids that were between 14 and 16 would be impacted by these videos, for when they reached the NHL,” Shanahan said.
The question remains what Rule 48 will look like for those next generations.
The future
Chris Nowinski is co-founder and CEO of the Concussion Legacy Foundation, a nonprofit organization leading the fight against concussions and CTE. He’s been an open critic of the way the NHL has handled both. But he said Rule 48 was a net positive development for the league.
“We all know that player behavior can be changed and penalties are a great way to do it. Rule 48 and the education videos that were released were very effective in making the game safer for those catastrophic hits to the head.”
Nowinski feels the NHL still isn’t candid enough with its players about the long-term impact of concussions in contact sports. “The responsible thing is to educate players about what they’re getting into,” he said.
Nowinski saw Rule 48 as an obvious evolution for the NHL, and ultimately good for business.
“The hits to the head 10 years ago were highlight videos. Or they were called out and made the league look bad. So it’s a very clear PR strategy to get them out of the game,” he said. “It’s about optics but it’s also about protecting your stars and keeping them in the game.”
He wonders if the next evolution will be a total ban on any contact with the head.
“They’re not selling tickets based on hits to the head,” said Nowinski. “Rule 48 proved you can change that behavior. Eliminating hits to the head could [make the NHL] more popular. It could be less popular. It’s a shame no one wants to try.”
There’s always been a sense that a total ban on head contact would change the way the game is played too dramatically. But there’s a notion that Rule 48 could go further, if not that far.
“I think there’s a possibility that more hits become illegal than are currently considered illegal hits,” said one NHL source.
Holland said there hasn’t been much discussion about a total ban on head contact among the GMs recently.
“I think it’s cooled down because of the effectiveness of Rule 48. But at the end of the day, it’s going to be hard to have any rule like that in there. The game is played at such a high speed. There’s physicality. You’re always going to have some head injuries,” he said. “With the education of the players and the rule changes, I do think we’re in a good place right now. But three years from now if there’s too many people injured, we might have to reassess. I can’t tell you what the future is going to bring.”
While a total ban on head contact may not be imminent, Parros does see one aspect of checking that could fall under the Rule 48 umbrella: hits where the head violently collides with the boards.
“We are constantly looking at and analyzing our game, how it’s played and where it can be improved or regulated in the best possible manner. When Rule 48 was first implemented, we were trying to eliminate those open-ice hits that ‘picked’ or ‘targeted’ the head. Over time, I think our efforts have worked quite well in this regard,” he said. “Looking forward, with many of the hits that we see, head contact occurs in and along the boards, and less so in the open ice. Secondary contact with the glass and boards is something that we see more of and will continue to monitor.”
Whatever the next iteration of Rule 48 looks like, it’s clear that one decade in, the league is safer, with the rule eliminating many of the catastrophic hits that were previously a commonplace part of the game.
If it existed in 2009, would players like David Booth have had a different career?
“It’s a hard question to answer. You never know what could have happened. How many times we’ve been saved from something and not realize it,” Booth said. “But there’s no doubt that it had a beneficial impact. Some of those hits that used to happen … they were crazy.”
Eli Lederman covers college football and recruiting for ESPN.com. He joined ESPN in 2024 after covering the University of Oklahoma for Sellout Crowd and the Tulsa World.
USC secured the commitment of former Oregon defensive tackle pledge Tomuhini Topui on Tuesday, a source told ESPN, handing the Trojans their latest recruiting victory in the 2026 cycle over the Big Ten rival Ducks.
Topui, ESPN’s No. 3 defensive tackle and No. 72 overall recruit in the 2026 class, spent five and half months committed to Oregon before pulling his pledge from the program on March 27. Topui attended USC’s initial spring camp practice that afternoon, and seven days later the 6-foot-4, 295-pound defender gave the Trojans his pledge to become the sixth ESPN 300 defender in the program’s 2026 class.
Topui’s commitment gives USC its 10th ESPN 300 pledge this cycle — more than any other program nationally — and pulls a fourth top-100 recruit into the impressive defensive class the Trojans are building this spring. Alongside Topui, USC’s defensive class includes in-state cornerbacks R.J. Sermons (No. 26 in ESPN Junior 300) and Brandon Lockhart (No. 77); four-star outside linebacker Xavier Griffin (No. 27) out of Gainesville, Georgia; and two more defensive line pledges between Jaimeon Winfield (No. 143) and Simote Katoanga (No. 174).
The Trojans are working to reestablish their local recruiting presence in the 2026 class under newly hired general manager Chad Bowden. Topui not only gives the Trojans their 11th in-state commit in the cycle, but his pledge represents a potentially important step toward revamping the program’s pipeline to perennial local powerhouse Mater Dei High School, too.
Topui will enter his senior season this fall at Mater Dei, the program that has produced a long line of USC stars including Matt Leinart, Matt Barkley and Amon-Ra St. Brown. However, if Topui ultimately signs with the program later this year, he’ll mark the Trojans’ first Mater Dei signee since the 2022 cycle, when USC pulled three top-300 prospects — Domani Jackson, Raleek Brown and C.J. Williams — from the high school program based in Santa Ana, California.
Topui’s flip to the Trojans also adds another layer to a recruiting rivalry rekindling between USC and Oregon in the 2026 cycle.
Tuesday’s commitment comes less than two months after coach Lincoln Riley and the Trojans flipped four-star Oregon quarterback pledge Jonas Williams, ESPN’s No. 2 dual-threat quarterback in 2026. USC is expected to continue targeting several Ducks commits this spring, including four-star offensive tackle Kodi Greene, another top prospect out of Mater Dei.
Missouri quarterback Drew Pyne has entered the portal as a graduate transfer, sources told ESPN on Tuesday.
Pyne is looking to move to his fourth school after stints at Notre Dame, Arizona State and Missouri. He’ll be a sixth-year senior this fall.
Pyne joined Missouri last year as a backup for senior starter Brady Cook. He earned one start, leading the Tigers to a 30-23 comeback win over Oklahoma while Cook was sidelined by ankle and wrist injuries.
Missouri brought in former Penn State quarterback Beau Pribulavia the transfer portal this offseason. He’ll compete with redshirt junior Sam Horn and true freshman Matt Zollers, the No. 86 overall recruit in the 2025 ESPN 300, for the opportunity to start this season.
Pyne, a former ESPN 300 recruit, began his career at Notre Dame and started 10 games for the Fighting Irish in 2022. He threw for 2,021 yards on 65% passing and scored 24 total touchdowns with six interceptions while winning eight of his starts.
After the Irish brought in grad transfer quarterback Sam Hartman, Pyne transferred to Arizona State but appeared in just two games with the Sun Devils before an injury forced him to sit out the rest of the season.
Pyne played 211 snaps over six appearances for the Tigers last season and threw for 391 yards on 60% passing with three touchdowns and three interceptions.
The NCAA’s spring transfer window opens April 16, but graduate transfers are permitted to put their name in the portal at any time. More than 160 FBS scholarship quarterbacks have already transferred this offseason.
There are slow starts, there are slumps, and then there is whatever Rafael Devers is going through.
The 28-year-old three-time All-Star for the Boston Red Sox has been one of baseball’s best hitters since 2019, posting three 30-homer seasons, three 100-RBI seasons and a whole bunch of doubles.
His first five games of 2025 have been a nightmare. It’s the early-season equivalent of dealing Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. Johnny Pesky holding the ball. Bucky Dent. The ball rolling through Bill Buckner’s legs. Aaron Boone. Just to name a few Red Sox references. Here’s how those games unfolded for Devers:
Game 1: 0-for-4, three strikeouts Game 2: 0-for-4, four strikeouts Game 3: 0-for-4, three strikeouts, walk, RBI Game 4: 0-for-4, two strikeouts, walk Game 5: 0-for-3, three strikeouts, two walks
He became the first player to strike out 12 times in a team’s first four games. And, yes, with 15 strikeouts through five games he shattered the old record of 13, shared by Pat Burrell in 2001 and Byron Buxton in 2017. Going back to the end of 2024, when Devers fanned 11 times over his final four games, he became the fourth player with multiple strikeouts in nine straight games — and one of those was a pitcher (the other two were a rookie named Aaron Judge in 2016 and Michael A. Taylor in 2021).
With Devers struggling, the Red Sox have likewise stumbled out of the gate, going 1-4 after some lofty preseason expectations, including an 8-5 loss to the Baltimore Orioles in the home opener Monday. To be fair, it’s not all on Devers: Jarren Duran, Devers and Alex Bregman, the top three hitters in the lineup, are a combined 11-for-62 (.177) with no home runs.
But there is one question weighing heaviest on the minds of Red Sox Nation right now: What is really going on with Devers?
It’s easy to say his head simply isn’t in the right space. Devers made headlines early in spring training after the Red Sox signed Bregman, saying he didn’t want to move to DH and that “third base is my position.” He pointed out that when he signed his $331 million extension in January of 2023, the front office promised he would be the team’s third baseman.
That, however, was when a different regime was in charge. Bregman, a Gold Glove winner in 2024, is the better defensive third baseman, so it makes sense to play him there and move Devers — except many players don’t like to DH. Some analysts even build in a “DH penalty,” assuming a player will hit worse there than when he plays the field. While Devers eventually relented and said he’d do whatever will help the team, it was a rocky situation for a few weeks.
But maybe it’s something else. While Devers avoided surgery this offseason, he spent it trying to rebuild strength in both shoulders after dealing with soreness and inflammation throughout 2024. He didn’t play the field in spring training and had just 15 plate appearances. So maybe he is still rusty — or the shoulder(s) are bothering him.
Indeed, Statcast metrics show his average bat speed has dropped from 72.5 mph in 2024 to 70.3 mph so far in 2025 (and those are down from 73.4 mph in 2023). His “fast-swing rate” has dropped from 34.2% in 2023 to 27.9% to 12.2%. Obviously, we’re talking an extremely small sample size for this season, but it’s clear Devers isn’t generating the bat speed we’re used to seeing from him.
That, however, doesn’t explain the complete inability to make contact. Red Sox manager Alex Cora told reporters after the series in Texas that Devers had made alterations with his foot placement — but was having trouble catching up to fastballs. Following Monday’s game, Devers told reporters (via his interpreter) that, “Obviously this is not a position that I’ve done in the past. So I need to get used to it. But I feel good, I feel good.”
Which leads to this question: Does this historic bad start mean anything? Since the DH began in 1973, three DHs began the season with a longer hitless streak than Devers’ 0-for-19 mark, so let’s dig into how the rest of their seasons played out:
Don Baylor with the 1982 Angels (0-for-20). Baylor ended up with a pretty typical season for him: .263/.329/.424, 24 home runs.
Evan Gattis of the 2015 Astros (0-for-23). Gattis hit .246 with 27 home runs — not as good as he hit in 2014 or 2016, but in line with his career numbers.
Curtis Terry with the Rangers in 2021 (0-for-20). Terry was a rookie who ended up playing just 13 games in the majors.
Expanding beyond just the DH position, I searched Baseball-Reference for players in the wild-card era (since 1995) who started a season hitless in at least 20 plate appearances through five games. That gave us a list of … just seven players, including Evan Carter (0-for-22) and Anthony Rendon (0-for-20) last season. Both ended up with injury-plagued seasons. The list also includes Hall of Famer Craig Biggio, who was 0-for-24 for the Houston Astros in 1995. He was fine: He hit .302/.406/.483 that season, made the All-Star team and finished 10th in the MVP voting. J.D. Drew started 0-for-25 through five games with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2005; he hit .286/.412/.520, although an injury limited him to 72 games.
But none of those hitters struck out nearly as often as Devers has.
So let’s focus on the strikeouts and expand our search to most strikeouts through the 15 first games of a season. Given his already astronomical total, Devers is likely to rank high on such a list even if he starts making more contact. Seventeen players struck out at least 25 times through 15 games, topped by Yoan Moncada and Miguel Sano with 29, both in 2018. Not surprisingly, all these seasons have come since 2006 and 12 since 2018.
How did that group fare?
They were actually OK, averaging a .767 OPS and 20 home runs. The best of the group was Matt Olson in 2023, who struck out 25 times in 15 games, but was also hitting well with a .317/.423/.650 line. He went on to hit 53 home runs. The next best season belongs to Giancarlo Stanton in 2018, his first with the Yankees. He finished with 38 home runs and an .852 OPS — but that was a big drop from his MVP season in 2017, when he mashed 59 home runs. His strikeout rate increased from 23.6% in 2017 to 29.9% — and he’s never been as good.
Indeed, that’s the worrisome thing for Devers: Of the 16 players who played the season before (Trevor Story was a rookie in 2016 when he struck out 25 times in 15 games, albeit with eight home runs), 13 had a higher OPS the previous season, many significantly so.
As Cora argued Monday, it’s a small sample size. “You know, this happens in July or August, we’d not even be talking about it,” he said.
That doesn’t really sound quite forthright. A slump, even a five-game slump, with this many strikeouts would absolutely be a topic of discussion. Still, that’s all the Red Sox and Devers have to go on right now: It’s just a few games, nothing one big game won’t fix. They just hope it comes soon.
