EDMONTON — Connor McDavid has become accustomed to the red carpet at the All-Star Game. As it turns out, it beats the carpet at the Department of Player Safety.
He had his say in a Friday hearing over his high hit on New York Islanders defenceman Nick Leddy, but in the end McDavid wasn’t sure the guys on the other end of the line were even listening.
“I thought I raised some good points about the play,” he said of his hearing that resulted in a two-game suspension. “But a lot of times, they already have their minds made up. They don’t really care what you have to say.”
Welcome to the club, Connor. When it comes to Rule 48 suspensions, that is a common refrain.
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But what you don’t hear as often is an organization that pushed back against the National Hockey League the way the Oilers have this week. The Oilers felt that McDavid’s history as a pacifist, the slow speed he was traveling at the point of impact, their evidence that he did not “pick” Nick Leddy’s head, and other mitigating circumstances should have limited the discipline to a fine.
“It wasn’t like it was an insane, blow-someone-up, kind of play,” said McDavid.
The team put out a statement on Thursday stating their displeasure, and Oilers CEP Bob Nicholson bolstered that on Saturday morning when he held a press conference.
“We’re really disappointed with the NHL’s decision and really disappointed for the team and the fans,” Nicholson said Saturday. “This is a first-time offence for Connor, everyone knows that Connor is a skilled player and I thought he did a very good job of explaining what he was doing before there was contact with Leddy.”
DoPS ruled with an iron fist, and the Oilers will play two crucial games without their captain, their playoff hopes set on flicker.
For the fans and media, the difficulty in finding common ground in any of these suspensions is compartmentalizing the play. A clean player like then-Anaheim Duck Andrew Cogliano gets two games for a high hit when the puck is long gone on Adrian Kempe, stopping his iron-man streak at 830 games; Erik Karlsson, a polite, skilled D-man, catches an opponent with his head down, clipping him in the head for a two-game ban.
That those players receive commensurate suspensions to McDavid’s is acceptable to most observers, if indeed a unilateral standard for Rule 48 head shots exists.
“It’s kind of a two-game, no questions asked kind of rule,” McDavid learned. “I have to be honest, I didn’t think I was going to be suspended at all going into the hearing. But after hearing their tone of voice and whatnot, I had a little bit of a sense it would go that way.”
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What casts doubt on decision-makers at Player Safety is when they rule on infractions that are not as standardized as Rule 48.
How can you watch repeat offender Radko Gudas, with clear and obvious intent last week, deliver an overhead chop with his stick to the top of Nikita Kucherov’s helmet, and square that with what McDavid or Karlsson did?
Gudas has a long list of priors and was undoubtedly attempting to injure an opponent, while McDavid and Karlsson simply made mistakes in a lightning-fast sport. Yet, they all received two games.
That is where an organization like Edmonton, whose player fills buildings and highlight packages across the league, feel poorly done by. That a hit that did not injure Leddy draws equal billing to other, more injurious infractions like the type Gudas has made a career of executing.
McDavid was asked to describe the play:
“There were a lot of different elements to it,” he began. “I’m on the back check, and I stopped skating at the red line (laughs), which obviously isn’t good for the back check. I was moving so slow.
“It’s a drop pass, it’s my guy, he bobbles the puck for a second and I go to close on him — to make a play on the puck. He just kind of gets rid of it, and at that time, we’re going to run into each other either way. So I brace myself. He gets the worst of it, because he’s in the more uncomfortable position.
“If the roles were reversed, and I was going to extend myself to touch the puck, then he goes through me. Now we’re maybe talking about me having a separated shoulder, or a head injury. So, if you’re going to pick which guy I’m going to protect, I’m going to protect myself first, right?”
McDavid protected himself on the play, and Nicholson took up the charge as soon as the suspension was levied.
“Watch his stats,” Nicholson said. “He strips pucks, and that was his intent. He realized he wasn’t going to get to that and he became small. He even lifted his inside leg up so there wouldn’t be real, hard contact. I thought he did everything possible because he was trying to get the puck.”
