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Musings: Manning Suspended Two Games |
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The National Hockey League's ever-capricious Department of Player Safety has issued a two-game suspension to Flyers defenseman Brandon Manning for an open-ice hit away from the puck on Pittsburgh's Jake Guentzel in Saturday's Stadium Series game at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh.
On the play, Guentzel played a puck off his skate to Sidney Crosby and skated parallel to the Penguins' captain as Manning approached. The Flyers defenseman delivered a hit and followed through with contact to the head after initially making shoulder contact with the smaller Guentzel.
Although the play was a clear-cut interference minor, no penalty was whistled. Guentzel, thankfully, was fine after the hit. The NHL most often issues discipline first and foremost based upon result. Not this time.
The NHL put word out within minutes of the play -- Darren Dreger was the first to Tweet it out -- the DOPS was reviewing the hit. News of an impending disciplinary action hearing for Manning came out on Sunday, and the ensuing suspension announcement from Stephane Quintal was inevitable at that point.
The suspension can be justified, in and of itself. What it tough to justify is why this particular play was deemed suspension worthy when many -- even most -- similar ones slide. If the NHL was truly serious about eliminating checks to the head with zero-tolerance enforcement from DOPS, that would be one thing.
The actual enforcement practices, though, are extremely inconsistent. DOPS would deny this up and down but the optics of the suspension hint that Manning was already in the crosshairs because he clashed with the league's newest superstar poster boy (Connor McDavid) and this particular play happened on national television and not some random midweek game, for which dozens of similar hits go ignored by DOPs year after year unless the recipient gets injured and there's a media fuss about the play.
Just as galling is the fact that, moments before the Manning hit, Michael Raffl was blatantly speared by Cameron Gaunce -- every bit as dangerous and serious of an offense -- and DOPS didn't even issue Gaunce a slap-on-the wrist fine.
Surprising? No. DOPS recently gave serial slew-footer Brad Marchand not just one but two mulligans on being suspended for slew-footing incidents within about a week of each other despite Marchand having been suspended for the very same thing in the past (which is supposed to be a determining factor in disciplinary rulings).
If Marchand wasn't an All-Star player averaging north of a point per game this season, would the NHL have looked the other way? By the same token, the Flyers' offender had been rising young star defenseman Ivan Provorov instead of role-playing Manning, would the player have been tagged for a suspension on the same play. It's a fair question, given DOPS very suspect track record of enforcement.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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