*This is a guest post by Jack Danielsen*
I sincerely hope some production company somewhere picks up the rights to tell the story of this Rangers season because, at this rate, I almost don’t believe it’s going to stop after the last game of the season against the Bruins on Saturday.
If you haven’t watched the incident that took place during Monday’s Capitals vs. Rangers game I encourage you to watch it for yourself and come to your own conclusions about it. Oh, right – forgot about Tuesday’s statement, too; read that afterwards. Also, watch the beginning of Wednesday’s game. Or just the whole game. Ah, and there’s some news that came out about Ranger’s management, you may want to check that out. And Buch got suspended. Sorry for all the homework.
First thing’s first, Tom Wilson is great at playing the game of hockey. That is, when he’s on the ice and not serving one of the several suspensions he’s earned over the course of this season or his career in general. He’s not just a power forward, he’s also skilled enough to be able to play a top-6 role for an perennially contending NHL team and can produce points consistently. He is one of the last of these types of players in the league. These are, however, the only good things that you can say about #43 for the Capitals.
For those who didn’t see, during Monday night’s game against the Rangers, Wilson became absolutely unhinged. You could see Wilson getting more and more angry as the period went on, especially after he took a penalty earlier in the period he felt was unwarranted. However, it all came to a head when Buchnevich was in the Washington crease, somewhat kicked at the puck once and then was promptly knocked down to the ice by a Washington player. It happens. But when Buch fell down, he landed with his neck on Wilson’s stick as he laid on the ice. Wilson, being in rare form Monday, took that as a perfect opportunity to practice his favorite personal pastime; preying on defenseless players.
Wilson gave the back of Buch’s head a punch, bouncing it off the ice. Strome, seeing this, tried to pull Wilson off Buch but got knocked over by another Capitals player. Wilson noticed Strome, so after Strome got taken down by and had a Capitals player laying on top of him, Wilson decided to keep that same energy going and punched Strome in his ass cheek while he was trapped under another player. Totally normal and hinged behavior from an adult.
Now at this point, Wilson’s already gone after two Rangers players who were lying face down on the ice when he engaged them. The real fun started when Panarin jumped on Wilson’s back after Panarin saw Strome being attacked. Now, Panarin weighs 175lbs with rocks in his pockets and #43 is at least 50lbs heavier. Wilson got up like a kid jumped on his back, turned Panarin around and grappled with him, removing Panarin’s helmet. Aiming to go 3-for-3 on a night of poor decision-making,Tom Wilson grabbed Panarin by the hair and proceeded to slam him down backwards on the ice in what could have been an immensely worse situation than it was. It cannot be overstated: we’re all very lucky that Panarin wasn’t more seriously injured in that moment. Not finished ragdolling Putin’s favorite winger, he took a page out of the WWE’s book and performed a DDT for everyone at MSG. Finally, after another couple seconds of wrestling on the ice, enough officials had jumped on top of Wilson until the scrum broke up. After he was taken to the penalty box, Wilson showed everyone exactly how he was feeling about what had just happened by flexing and chirping toward the Rangers from the box. Again, very normal behavior there from someone who is a totally serious professional athlete.
After some time spent gathering equipment and shuffling players on and off the ice, the game resumed and the second period ended. There was no word on anything regarding Wilson, or if he would return for the third period. When the teams came out for the third, Wilson and Panarin were among those returning to the ice. Wilson would play the remainder of the game, but Panarin wouldn’t finish the game after sustaining an undisclosed, lower-body injury from the fight. He’s apparently ok (relatively speaking at least), but will not return for the final 3 games of the season.
In the post-game interviews, David Quinn along with every Ranger player lambasted the Caps’ forward for lacking respect for the game and its players. The next day, Wilson was fined $5,000 for “roughing NY Rangers’ Pavel Buchnevich,” and somehow avoided what would be his second suspension of the season. With this action, the NHL further ingrained in its players and fans that for just a $5,000 fine you can do everything from squirting some water on a player as you skate past them to trying to slam someone’s skull on the ice. Choice is yours!
Hours later, the much anticipated sequel to The Letter dropped. The Statement was released by the Rangers. In this unprecedented move by an NHL organization, they called out George Parros, head of the NHL Department of Player Safety and former NHL goon, by name and said he was “unfit” for his current role and stated his actions, or lack thereof, following the incident were “a dereliction of duty.” The San Jose Sharks organization did put out a statement in 2013 following the suspension of Raffi Torres, although they didn’t mention anyone by name and were much more measured in their response. This earned the Sharks a $100,000 fine from the NHL.
Then, on May 4th, 2021, James Dolan entered the chat, firing both the President of Hockey Operations John Davidson and General Manager Jeff Gorton in a stunning move. Allegedly, the firings had nothing to do with the Tom Wilson incident or The Statement but rather, was something that Dolan had been mulling for some time. According to reports, after the two shut-out losses to the Islanders, Dolan became vocal about his unhappiness with the direction of the team, and I’m sure Glen Sather was whispering similar sentiments into his ear.
Also, Dolan and Sather are reportedly also big fans of Chris Drury, who’s been the heir-apparent for the General Manager’s throne in New York for some time now. Drury had been interviewed twice by teams recently: once before the start of the season for a GM job in Florida but he turned it down, and again later this season in Pittsburgh but he turned that job down as well. It’s pretty likely that Dolan saw so many potential suitors for Drury, was dissatisfied with the current course of the team and simply decided now was his time. Afterall, this type of reaction from Dolan is pretty typical when you look at the Knicks’ coaching and management changes as a comparison.
However, despite how strongly the team is trying to claim The Statement had nothing to do with the firings–and perhaps this was inevitable because of exactly what I wrote above–I have a very hard time believing the timing was in no way influenced by it. This is especially true when you consider the season has less than a week left and the well reported story that Jeff Gorton and John Davidson were both openly trying to distance themselves from The Statement, an act that can easily be viewed as being in direct defiance of a rather serious and unprecedented message the owner of the most valuable franchise in the sport–and their boss–was trying to send.
Anyway, thankfully, if there was anyone that had to run the Rangers besides Jeff Gorton and John Davidson, it would have to be Chris Drury. And, well, now it is.
The NHL was largely quiet following the Rangers’ statement until Wednesday afternoon when Bill Daly, on a podcast with Pierre LeBrun, said that the NHL was mulling an “appropriate response.” They wouldn’t make their decision public prior to the game Wednesday night when the Capitals and Rangers were set to meet again. With that, the NHL effectively handed the responsibility to respond to the players themselves and showed their affection for the vigilante justice that ensued later that night. The NHL would later fine the Rangers organization $250,000 for their words of criticism. But I’m sure he considers that money well spent. For someone like Dolan, that fine offers about the same amount of deterrence that the $5,000 would an NHL player.
Wednesday’s game went about as you would expect.
In barely the amount of time it takes to boo Gary Bettman, three fights had broken out at center ice. Kevin Rooney, Phil DiGuiseppe, and Colin Blackwell all dropped their gloves in unison and started brawling with the Caps’ fourth line. After the situation was reigned in by the officials and play resumed, Tom Wilson stepped on the ice and, in the time it would take to tell George Parros to kick rocks, Smith charged him and put up a good fight with someone way out of his weight class. Funnily enough and totally fitting with the theme so far this week, Brendan Smith actually got more penalty minutes after that fight Wednesday than Wilson did after what he did to Panarin and Buchnevich Monday. Not only that, but Kevin Rooney created one of the greatest Rangers photos ever when he mocked Tom Wilson from the bench and was somehow assessed a 10-minute misconduct for it. That one was worth it.
Not much later in the first, Anthony Bitetto fought a Cap. Then Ryan Strome fought another. Morgan Barron dropped the gloves to fight T.J. Oshie but Oshie, especially considering what Wednesday’s game must’ve meant to him, skated away from Barron. Really, the only bright spots from Wednesday’s game were Barron’s first NHL goal that came late in the third and Oshie’s hat-trick. Good for both of them.
The high-tension game continued without Wilson, who sat out the second and third periods with an upper-body injury (Steve Valliquette did mention Colton Orr would be at the game, I wonder where they both were at that time…). Buch, after being picked on by Anthony Mantha for a large part of the game, tried to break his stick over Mantha’s nose. That would very rightfully earn Buch a hearing with the DoPS on Thursday after which Buch was assessed a one game ban because of the incident.
From an outsider, the DoPS’s decision-making process here seems eerily similar to the South Park episode where Stan is trying to get a refund for his Margaritaville machine. Chris Johnston went on SportsNet recently and said the process for evaluating when or when not to give a player a suspension, unfortunately and unexpectedly, does not involve a headless chicken or a kazoo. He said, instead, the department mentally removes the nameplate from the players involved and then asks, “was this incident suspendable?” This is to say that they also remove any history that a player may have with the department. It’s only when the DoPS has established that whatever offense they’re looking at has actually risen to the level of having a suspension awarded that a player’s history becomes a relevant factor.
This means that the fact Wilson puts himself in these positions regularly and has for years is not even a factor in evaluating whether or not he should be suspended. Questions such as “has this happened before,” “have we punished this person before,” “what punishments have/have not worked,” “do they seem in any way apologetic or remorseful,” or even wondering if they had any intent to injure someone on the play are never even asked when interpreting a given incident.
Being the head of the Department of Player Safety is an absolutely thankless job. People start breaking out their pitchforks when something like this Wilson situation occurs and the crickets hardly come out when something’s done right. But the Rangers were correct in their statement, even if the exact language they used was a bit hyperbolic. George Parros objectively did not do his job. He abdicated his duty to the players and let them sort it out. The league, who only stepped in when Wilson sent Bruins’ defender Brandon Carlo to the hospital because of the “optics” of the situation, is complicit in that.
Oh, speaking of the two of them, Tom Wilson is the main Club Player Representative for the Washington Capitals, so he’s part of the group “tasked with directing the NHLPA affairs and policy making decisions necessary to carry out the NHLPA’s work.” There’s something to be said here for putting yourself in the best situation to succeed. Brandon Carlo is the representative for Boston Bruins
After all of this one has to honestly ask: what did the NHL and the Department of Player Safety expect to happen when they failed to do anything?
It may be naive to say none of what happened Wednesday would have happened had Wilson been suspended (although, many would argue this is in fact true), but at the very least the one fight involving Wilson would have been prevented. There wouldn’t have been as much of a need to retaliate if you were the Rangers because the league would have already done something about it. Something that could have been accomplished was simply decreasing the chances of a line brawl. But no, the DoPS unequivocally stated with their actions that they prefer to have the players they are supposed to protect punch each other repeatedly in the face as opposed to suspending a player.
Oh, they fined Wilson? The fact they fined him almost makes it worse, as it means the DoPS is recognizing what Wilson did does in fact warrant additional discipline, but that the discipline warranted amounts to an average person lighting a $20 bill on fire. The fact that Tom Wilson, or any NHL player for that matter, is supposed to be deterred by a $5,000 fine is even more naive. Wilson’s total salary this season according to CapFriendly is $4.1 million (this is what he actually earns, not his AAV/cap hit). The NHL (and the NHL PA) needs to increase the ability for the Department of Player Safety to fine players amounts that would make them think about their actions, and hold players accountable instead of forcing players to hold other players accountable.
Or, better yet, the league can actually get a clue and learn that the purpose of suspensions and fines is similar to managerial feedback in any normal line of business. The purpose of constructive feedback in business, and fines/suspensions in the NHL, is not so much to punish what transpired–what’s done is done and you can’t change that–but it is to serve as a corrective mechanism that encourages more positive behaviors going forward. If you think issuing a multi-millionaire a $5,000 fine is going to serve as this corrective mechanism, then I find myself sitting here wondering if you’d like to purchase this bridge in Brooklyn I have for sale.
