“I think it’s a dangerous play,” Trotz said on Thursday. “I think it should not be in our game. And any player who’s looking to try to wreck a guy’s knee or injure him, especially when the play is dead, that definitely should be out of the game. Every player on every team will tell you that’s disrespectful if they watch it. They’ll just say that can’t be in the game.”

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Trotz said it’s the second time something like that has happened in this series, referencing an earlier cross-check from Philadelphia forward Wayne Simmonds toward Alex Ovechkin’s knee in Game 2. Trotz said he mentioned the incidents to Mick McGeough, who is supervising officials in this series.

“That’s twice,” Trotz said. “Once is maybe a coincidence. Twice is not.”

Caps forward Tom Wilson was also asked Thursday if he had seen a replay of the incident.

“Yeah, there’s really no way to put it, but that’s pretty cheap,” Wilson said. “You come in after a whistle and you target a guy’s knee like that, there’s really no time for that. That’s just another kind of a little piece of motivation that we can use, they’re targeting a guy like Kuzy, cross-checking him in the knee. I mean, that’s a pretty dangerous play, so we’ll just use that as a little motivation to send those guys home. We don’t like that, obviously one of our best players. We’re just going to kind of play within the rules and hopefully send them home, send them packing.”