Tom Wilson of the Washington Capitals was fined but not suspended for his actions in a post-whistle scrum in New York against the Rangers.
The Capitals are ready to move on.
The Rangers, however, believe there hasn’t been enough punishment for one of hockey’s most polarizing players.
On Tuesday, the NHL fined Wilson $ 5,000 for roughing up Rangers forward Pavel Buchnevich in the second period on Monday at Madison Square Garden.
The fine is the maximum allowed for the incident under the collective agreement.
Wilson was not penalized for throwing Artemi Panarin on the ice moments later.
Ryan Strome of the Rangers sees it as “a joke”, saying the league has seriously missed the boat.
In a statement, the club went even harder, viewing Wilson’s behavior as a “horrible act of violence” and targeting senior vice president of NHL player safety George Parros for his inaction.
“Wilson is a repeat offender with several such gestures on his track record.
“We find it shocking that the NHL and its player safety department did not take the appropriate action through an indefinite suspension,” said the Rangers.
“Wilson’s dangerous and reckless actions resulted in an injury to Artemi Panarin which will prevent him from playing again this season.
“We see this as a dereliction of duty on the part of NHL Chief Safety Officer George Parros and we believe he is unfit to continue in his current role.”
Wilson was given a minor double for harshness and a 10-minute misconduct. The fine is 0.12% of Wilson’s $ 4.1 million salary this season.
“It’s the discipline coming from the league, and Tom is going to take it over and we’ll move on,” said Capitals coach Peter Laviolette, who after the game called it a physical game that “happens a lot. “.
“It looked like they were crowding the goalie and Tom hit him in the upper shoulder and then hit him somewhere in the back,” added Laviolette.
“After that some guys rushed at him and there was a big scrum.”
Panarin was excluded from the rest of the match; the Rangers have spoken of a lower body injury.
Coach David Quinn has said Panarin will miss Rangers’ last three games of the season and confirmed the injury came from the incident with Wilson.
“Everyone in our organization is definitely very disappointed,” said Quinn. For us that justifies a suspension. We are really disappointed. A line has been crossed: the guy did not have his helmet, he is vulnerable, he got injured. For me, there was a lot of ground for suspension. “
This is Wilson’s third fine in eight NHL seasons; he was suspended five times.
The most recent suspension was seven games in March for giving Bruins’ Brandon Carlo some slack.
In suspending him for the blow to Carlo, the league’s player safety department called Wilson “a player with a substantial disciplinary record where he takes advantage of a defenseless opponent with significant force.”
Laviolette has also said that captain Alex Ovechkin will probably not play Wednesday, again at Madison Square Garden.
Ovechkin skated for just 39 seconds on Monday night before leaving the game.
He’s missed the previous four games with a lower body injury, and the team are working to make sure Ovechkin is ready for the playoffs.
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