Mild are mad. Saturday might be fun:
Wild insider: Players say they’ll make L’Heureux pay if NHL won’t
After captain
Jared Spurgeon was injured on a slew foot by
Nashville Predatorsrookie Zach L’Heureux on Dec. 31, there was plenty of public and private outrage from his
Minnesota Wild teammates as well as members of the team’s front office.
The Wild didn’t like seeing Spurgeon, a top defenseman, knocked out of their lineup for a number of weeks by a reckless play from a rookie who had previously been suspended nine times in juniors and twice in the AHL. The fact that L’Heureux got a match penalty and three-game suspension (forfeiting $13,489.59 in salary) seemed awfully light to the Wild, although the
NHL can’t take his history in other leagues into account.
President of hockey operations and general manager Bill Guerin called it a “dirty play by a dirty player” on his weekly WCCO radio appearance.
“Slew-footing in a lot of sports is a s—-y play,” assistant captain
Marcus Folignotold
The Athletic. “I don’t know, maybe in UFC you could do it. When a guy crosses the line in that sense, something has to be taken in measures. Yeah, he got suspended, but we lost (Spurgeon). It’s a dirty play. It should be more games.
“He shouldn’t be able to just walk out of Xcel that night because (Spurgeon) wasn’t able to.”
Yakov Trenin tried to engage L’Heureux in a fight right after the hit, but the rookie declined. Now the Wild have another game against the
Predators on the horizon, in Nashville on Saturday.
“When you see a guy cheapshotted, that stuff needs to be answered for,” Foligno said. “The L’Heureux thing is blatant, trying to hurt a guy. We got into the boards so many times with D-men. You just guide them in. It’s not the ’80s or ’90s where you can get away with anything on the forecheck.
“They’ve got a lot of guys on Nashville that understand the code, and the young kid doesn’t understand. It’s frustrating. There will be a price to pay for that game. I’m sure he’ll have to answer to someone.”
Why wasn’t there a larger penalty from the league for the play? Suspensions are determined by precedent and repeat-offender status, and fines by the CBA, and some former players who spoke to
The Athletic about the system said it’s inadequate for policing the game.
Former Wild forward Mike Rupp, now an NHL Network analyst, said he heard it a million times in the locker room during his career after a teammate had to pay a fine: “Best money I’ve ever spent.” Rupp and former enforcer Andre Roy both said the penalties don’t hit the players enough where it hurts: their pocketbook.
“I don’t think there’s any deterrent in place,” said Rupp, who coincidentally never played another game after receiving a four-game suspension for elbowing
T.J. Oshie in the second-to-last game of the 2013-14 regular season for the Wild. “The only time there ever was a deterrent was when they first started. They had some pretty substantial suspensions at that time.
“I just find that suspensions are not a deterrent. Everyone wants to jump the Department of Player Safety. The players’ association puts up resistance with some of these things. But they’re at the table, too, you know what I mean? So the players that are getting hurt are putting the restraints on severely or punishing players.
“My point in all this if you want it to change, it’s not complaining the league needs to change it. The players need to talk to their agents. And they need to say they want the rules changed as far as discipline. Then it’ll change. The league is not all of a sudden going to say, ‘We have injuries, we’re going to make a substantial change.’ If the players do it, they will. If you want changes to player safety, the players have to drive it.”
So, in Rupp’s view, if players have a problem with the inequity of suspensions and fines, they have the power to help change that in upcoming CBA negotiations.
Roy, who was suspended multiple times in his career, said missing games didn’t hurt him as much as when there were larger fines. He doesn’t know what the right amount of fine would be the ideal deterrent, but said, “Maybe if you’re chasing a guy, coming 100 miles per hour like
Tom Wilson, maybe you’ll bring him into the boards, hugging him instead of running him head first into the boards or slew-footing.”
Rupp echoed that point to
The Athletic, saying George Parros, the head of the Department of Player Safety, doesn’t have the power many fans might imagine. “I think that’s where people get hung up,” he said. “They think, ‘Wow, that was the most severe, grossly whatever thing that happened — throw the book at them.’ Well, the book has already been written.”
Foligno understands players can talk to the NHLPA and league about stiffer penalties. He said if there’s any types of penalties he’d like to see increased or changed, it’d be for slew-footing and kneeing, the type of infraction that happened to Spurgeon. It should be noted the Wild’s
Ryan Hartman was suspended two games last season for slew-footing
Alex DeBrincat, although the league deemed it “tripping” in the suspension video.
“I don’t love that hit — I don’t want to see it,” Rupp said of the Spurgeon injury. “Because a guy can lose a year, it can change the trajectory of his career. The franchise can dismantle, depending on who it is. We’re talking about a billion-dollar industry now, and that could change a lot of different things because of a careless play like that. In my mind, I’m like, ‘Just whack this kid (L’Heureux) with whatever.’ But you can’t do that.”
