Voracek appeal denied, which only makes sense in Bettman’s league
PHILADELPHIA >> Jake Voracek wasn’t going to try to figure it out. Why bother?
He gave it his best shot, and if it wasn’t good enough ... try, try again?
“I don’t know, we made the case, I had a good feeling about it,” Voracek said after an afternoon practice at Wells Fargo Center Wednesday. “But they’re not going to tell you how they feel right away.”
Instead, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman waited until later in the day to decide Voracek, who somehow managed to incur a two-game suspension by turning his back on an approaching Islanders hit man Monday night, would indeed serve the full length of that sentence that didn’t make much sense.
But it does fall in line with the almost coin-flip guidelines the league and its brilliant Department of Player Safety have somewhat established as they go along trying to figure out what’s right and what’s wrong when it comes to enforcing physical contact.
You know ... the most intrinsic part of the sport of hockey.
Voracek knows he was too far away from the puck when he turned his back and flexed his whatever-it’s-called muscle back there while backing into Islanders defenseman Johnny Boychuk. Down he went, barreling into the boards, all because Voracek was bracing for a hit and instead doled out a vicious one in the process.
Or at least that’s how the experts saw it.
Voracek admitted he knew it was a proper interference call, because he wasn’t close enough to the puck when the contact occurred. But the suspension really didn’t have to do with that.
“There’s no question about it, that there was interference,” Voracek said. “One explanation of the suspension was that I went out of my way to make head contact with Johnny Boychuk, which I don’t think I did. I don’t think I changed my weight drastically. My explanation was that I was bracing for contact. I stand behind it. I didn’t mean anything by it, or to hurt him. Obviously they saw it differently.”
Thus, Voracek — who in an 11-year career had never been suspended or fined for any hockey offense — will miss his second straight game Thursday night when the defending Stanley Cup champion Washington Capitals come back to town.
The visiting Capitals buried the Flyers early then withstood a lategame comeback attempt in a win last week at Wells Fargo Center. Just as then, this is another must-upset kind of game for the Flyers, who have the joy of traveling to Toronto to face the talented Maple Leafs Friday night.
Had Voracek not been flagged for a five-minute interference major penalty, a rarity in and of itself, those two tall challenges wouldn’t be so daunting, as Voracek is the Flyers’ second leading scorer and has added much fuel of late to the power play.
But for this first of a two-game daunting challenge, he’ll probably watch from the press box.
“If that happened in Game 30 or 40, I would still (do) the same thing, because I don’t think it was that harsh and (worthy of) two games,” Voracek said. “That’s what I told them.”
It’s what Voracek told the “Player Safety” people, who are supervised by Western Pennsylvania native George Parros, who made a living in the NHL by leading with his fists first. (In this league, that makes sense).
It’s also what Voracek told Big Boss Man Bettman in an official appeal, which officially went nowhere Wednesday. Why? Because Bettman isn’t about to go against Parros’ carefully constructed board of disciplinarians.
And yet in recent games, the Flyers saw Pittsburgh’s Evgeni Malkin issue an intentional backhand swing of the stick that glanced off the head of Michael Raffl, and then subsequently in Newark the Devils’ Kurtis Gabriel checked an unsuspecting Nolan Patrick face-first into the boards at Prudential Center.
Those two acts of modern-era violence each received a one-game suspension. So Voracek making a hit with his back gets two?
As has so often been the case since Bettman reorganized his league police, these suspension decisions aren’t only subjective, they can be exasperating.
“I was probably taken as an aggressor, which I don’t think I was,” Voracek said. “But they saw it differently. That’s why they gave me two games.”
Of course, that’s his opinion. Other opinions on Player Safety departmental decisions vary case to case.
“The department of safety, they have a lot of guys looking at different angles,” said Flyers defenseman Radko Gudas, an expert in this area. “Obviously it’s a judgement call when they make their decision. But obviously guys need to protect themselves at all times, when they’re reaching for pucks or getting somewhere with their heads first. The game is so fast, to make a judgement on something (is difficult). But they’ve been doing it for a while and the league’s trusting them. That’s the way we have to approach it.”
Yeah, that but that doesn’t mean they have to like it.
“With that particular play,” Voracek said, “and my (lack of) history, I don’t think I deserved two.”
••• Carter Hart will make his first start since injuring an ankle Feb. 21 in Montreal. It’s not lost on him that the Flyers enter the game five points behind the Canadiens and Columbus Blue Jackets, who are tied for the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference.
“Every game from here on, it really matters,” Hart said. “We have 13 games left or something like that, so we just go out and play our game, and for us to be successful we have to play our game and we can’t stray away from it.”