Wilson’s 20-game ban upheld after appeal
Forward has seven days to appeal to a neutral arbitrator after ruling
Following an appeal hearing that lasted more than seven hours Oct. 18 in New York, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman ruled Thursday to uphold the 20-game ban on Washington Capitals forward Tom Wilson. Wilson was suspended Oct. 3 by the NHL Department of Player Safety (DPS) for an illegal check to the head of St. Louis Blues forward Oskar Sundqvist, who suffered a concussion and a shoulder injury on the hit.
The appeals process isn’t necessarily over. The NHL Players’ Association, working on behalf of Wilson, has seven days to appeal to a neutral arbitrator. Wilson was set to miss his ninth game Thursday night, and it’s possible he will have already served the bulk of his suspension by the time a neutral arbitrator rules.
Getting games back in an appeal could have significant financial ramifications. Wilson forfeited roughly $1.2 million as part of the discipline, based on his contract’s average annual value of $5.17 million, and while he received a signing bonus of $5 million, his actual salary this season is $1.1 million. Unless the suspension is reduced, he won’t see another pay check for the rest of the season.
Bettman wrote in the concluding section of his ruling: “In my judgment, a 20 regular-season game suspension assessed to Mr. Wilson reflects and accounts for appropriately the unique combination of factors involved in this case, including the gravity of the offense, Mr. Wilson’s prior disciplinary record (particularly within the relatively short period of time in which it was amassed), the multiple warnings and guidance he has received from the DPS, and the seriousness of Mr. Sundqvist’s injury.”
According to Bettman’s 31-page ruling, the players’ association’s “primary Capitals forward Tom Wilson Wilson was suspended 20 games for an illegal check to the head, his fourth suspension dating from last preseason. argument” was that there was no violation of Rule 48, which covers illegal checks to the head, so there shouldn’t have been supplemental discipline of any kind. Specifically, Wilson and t he NHLPA argued t hat Sundqvist’s head wasn’t the “main point of contact” and that the contact was unavoidable within the parameters of Rule 48. They also asserted that, even if Wilson had delivered an illegal check to the head, a 20-game suspension was “excessive,” and when Bettman asked what length of suspension the hit warranted, the players’ association suggested eight games.
But Bettman agreed with the Department of Player Safety that Wilson violated Rule 48. According to Bettman’s ruling, while Wilson testified that “he could not have done anything differently to avoid checking” Sundqvist, Capitals general manager Brian MacLellan, who attended the hearing, said Wilson “had options” to avoid head contact.
Bettman wrote, “Even if I accept that Mr. Wilson did not intend to make head contact with Mr. Sundqvist or attempt to injure him, the fact of the matter was that the check was intentional — it was not accidental.” Bettman pointed out that in October 2017, Wilson met with George Parros, the head of the Department of Player Safety, and Parros traveled to Toronto this August “to meet one-on-one with Mr. Wilson again to provide him with feedback on his style of play, and to advise him on how to make necessary adjustments to his game that might help to avoid or minimize the likelihood of him executing illegal and dangerous checks.”
This was Wilson’s fourth suspension dating from last preseason, and the Department of Player Safety described a fourth incident in 105 games, including preseason and playoffs, as “an unprecedented frequency of suspensions in the history” of the department, which is what led to the harsh ruling.
As part of Bettman’s conclusion, he wrote that a 20-game suspension might “be the only effective way to deter Mr. Wilson’s future ‘bad conduct.’ ”