Suspensions and protecting integrity

Does anyone actually think that the NHL does a good job handling suspensions? Okay, so maybe this problem is nothing new. It's still something that bothers me.


A lot of vicious plays go unpunished. Some fairly insignificant events are punished quite severely. I don't want to go into too much detail on the inconsistencies. If you want any evidence, ask absolutely any hockey fan anywhere. There are all sorts of jokes about the wheel of discipline. Personally, I always thought it was a dart board.

I will predictably bring up one comparison. Rome had a late hit on Horton in the Stanley Cup final. It was clearly a penalty, but hardly anything out of the ordinary for the sport. We see hits that late all the time. The league handed out an unprecedented (as far as the Final is concerned) 4-game suspension. Even while defending the suspension, the league could only point to the lateness of the hit as what Rome did wrong (the replay proved that he only left his feet as a result of the hit).

Two games later, Boychuck twisted Raymond into a vulnerable position and pushed him into the boards. Raymond never even touched the puck, and the final push was much further from the play than Rome's hit. It more definitively qualified as interference and was unquestionably the dirtier of the two plays. There was no penalty, and the league did not hand out a suspension.

I'm not just bringing up this comparison because I'm admittedly a fan of the most mistreated and misrepresented team in the NHL (the hockey media absolutely sucks). It's also because I wanted to bring up another point. Suspensions in the NHL are frequently used to defend officials.

That probably needs a bit of an explanation. If someone receives a major penalty, it increases the odds that a suspension will be handed out. If the refs missed a penalty (can anyone deny that Boychuck's hit at least qualified as interference?), a suspension would indicate that the refs were wrong. The league doesn't want that, especially in the playoffs. To protect the apparent (but invalid) integrity of the game, the league is reluctant to do or say anything that can raise questions about the outcomes of games.

As I have said repeatedly, officials need accountability. They are human. Calling them out on some of their bigger mistakes is acceptable. I feel that there is far more integrity in the league trying to get as much right as possible than trying to cover up mistakes. The call on the ice should not determine suspensions. Instead, the league should take it's time and evaluate what actually happened. That's a luxury that on-ice officials don't have. That's all the explanation we need to understand how a play that didn't warrant a penalty could be suspendable.