Kevin Bieksa shares hot take on the McDavid cross-check.

Saturday night's game between the Vancouver Canucks and Edmonton Oilers produced some pretty intense fireworks at the end of the game, fireworks that are likely to lead to a pair of suspensions for Oilers captain Connor McDavid and Canucks defenseman Tyler Myers.

The incident at the end of the game, one that saw both McDavid and Myers deliver ugly cross-checks to the head and face of their opponents, has caused plenty of discussion and one of the more interesting takes on the matter comes to us courtesy of a former player in the National Hockey League. Former NHLer Kevin Bieksa, who for many has become one of the highlights of the Sportsnet broadcast, shared his opinion on what went down at the end of the game and had a bit of a hot take on the matter.

Bieksa, who is a former Canucks defenseman, argued that the way the NHL polices the game in the modern day has made situations like this one all but inevitable.

"If there's ever an argument to keep fighting in the NHL this is why," said Bieksa over the weekend. "The personnel on the ice for Edmonton is the six best offensive guys... Vancouver has a little bit [of a] gritter lineup so no one's gonna fight. You don't want McDavid fighting, you don't want Draisaitl so something's gonna give. When it gets down to this something is gonna give and because there's no fighting... this is what you're gonna get. You're gonna get a cross-check to the face, you're gonna get stick work."

Bieksa highlighted the blow from Myers as a specific example of why the attempts to remove fighting from the game lead to situations like this one.

"Bouchard you don't want him to fight, Myers knows that," said Bieksa. "So instead of Myers just dropping the gloves and having a fight where they probably just wrestle each other to the ice and nobody gets hurt, it's a vicious cross-check to the face."

Bieksa even went so far as to warn the league about trying to further push fighting out of the sports.

"So just keep that in the back of your mind when you're thinking 'Let's get fighting out of the NHL' well no fighting, more cross-checks to the face in my opinion."

To be clear Bieksa was not attempting to justify either action nor was he trying to suggest that either McDavid or Myers would avoid punishment, in fact he said quite the opposite.

"They're both the same bad cross-check to the head," said Bieksa of the blows from both Myers and McDavid. "They're both suspensions I don't know how you argue those."

What do you think of Bieksa's take? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.