SUSPENSIONS MAY SIGNAL MUCH TOUGHER STANCE ON VICIOUS PLAYOFF HITS
Let’s get this out of the way first.
We acknowledge that, short of Donald Trump’s marriage counsellor, there isn’t a more demanding, complicated and, ultimately, thankless job than being the head of the NHL’s department of player safety.
On any given ruling, half of your constituents believe you are part of a sophisticated and sinister plot to screw their team, while the other half believes you lacked the fortitude to mete out the necessary level of punishment.
This explains why the DOPS changes its top man more often than some people change socks. It also explain why, two days into this season’s playoffs, the league’s disciplinary committee is the game’s main talking point.
On Thursday, the DOPS passed down a one-game suspension to Kings’ defenceman Drew Doughty which, depending on your point of view, was a courageous decision that sets a clear precedent for the rest of the post-season. Or, it was an outrageous sentence that alters the competitive landscape in the Kings- Golden Knights’ series.
That, at least, was the news from Day 1. Turns out it was just a warm-up for what was to follow.
In the aftermath of Day 2, fans in Toronto, Boston, Washington, Columbus, Nashville and Colorado are still processing four incidents that raised equal parts of anger and confusion.
In Toronto, the Leafs were reeling after valuable centre Nazem Kadri was handed a three-gamer for his hit on Boston’s Tommy Wingels. OK, you’re thinking, the NHL has now marked a clear line in the sand and sent a message that high hits and head shots will not be tolerated.
But, wouldn’t you know it, earlier on Friday the league announced no further disciplinary action would be taken against Washington’s Tom Wilson for his hit on Columbus’s Alex Wennberg, the Jackets’ Josh Anderson for his hit on Capitals’ defenceman Michal Kempny or the Preds’ Ryan Johansen for his hit on Colorado’s Tyson Barrie. So where does that leave us? Wish I knew.
Look, railing against the NHL’s incompetence in these matters is the ultimate low-hanging fruit for an editorialist and that’s not the intent here. On balance, the league has done a better job in the last couple years of explaining its decisions while establishing a coherent set of standards and precedents.
Fans, in turn, now have some idea of what to expect. At least they do most of the time.
In the regular season, there were 23 suspensions handed down by the DOPS and 16 of those were between one and three games. The year before there were 26 suspensions, 17 between one and three games. In 2015-16 there were 33 suspensions, 25 in that one-to-three area.
To be sure, there were some heinous offences in there — anyone remember 41 games for Raffi Torres? But the vast majority were for your garden variety elbowing, charging or interference fouls in which the head was targeted in some way. Along the way a message was being sent and, for the most part, it was received by the players.
But the playoffs have always been a different animal which is why this early outbreak bears watching.
Two years ago, there were just two one-game suspensions in the post-season, to Columbus’s Matt Calvert and Anaheim’s Nick Ritchie and Ritchie’s was a carryover from the regular season.
The year before was a little busier with five suspensions handed down in the post-season, most notably a three-gamer to Washington’s Brooks Orpik for his hit on the Penguins’ Olli Maatta.
But suspension to players the calibre of Doughty and, to a lesser extent Kadri, have always been an extreme rarity. The playoffs, in fact, have represented that one area where you look at the NHL and reasonably ask, what is the standard here?
Take 2011 for example. Don’t mean to pick at an old scab but the four-game suspension to the Canucks’ Aaron Rome in the Stanley Cup Final still beggars belief. Rome had never been suspended in his NHL career.
With an injury to defenceman Dan Hamhuis, he was a key player for the Canucks. And that suspension still remains the longest to arise from an on-ice incident in Cup Final history, Billy Coutu notwithstanding.
Sorry, you’re going to have to look that one up for yourself.
There were any number of questions to arise from the Rome controversy, but the biggest might have been the exchange rate between playoff games and the regular season. That’s still yet to be answered satisfactorily — is it two? Three? Is it more for a Cup final? — and the NHL could do itself a big favour by clearing that up, once and for all.
As things stand, the penalty to Doughty and the impending penalty to Kadri are significant. Should the Kings, who are already without regular blueliners Jake Muzzin and Derek Forbort drop Game 2 to the Knights, they’ll have a 15 per cent chance of coming back to win the series.
The odds, just so you know, would increase by a fair bit if it was 1-1 after two games. Either way, the Kings must be thinking this is one helluva time to get tough on head shots.
“I don’t think it’s suspension worthy,” Doughty said Friday. “I think it’s BS really. It’s awful. Watching the games last night, I guess he’s got four or five more to give.”
On this, as in all things, we shall see.