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Tuesday, 18 October 2011 16:06

Written by Seth Rorabaugh

Penguins defenseman Kris Letang has been suspended two games by the NHL for a hit from behind on Jets forward Alexander Burmistrov at the 13:08 mark in the third period of last night's 2-1 loss to the Jets. Letang was given a boarding minor on the play.

The hit in question:

Letang will miss tonight's game against the Wild and Thursday's contest against the Canadiens.

EN Says: This is a curious decision by the league. NHL discipline czar Brendan Shanahan has made a point of placing an onus on the "victim" of hits such as this. From our vantage point, it appears as if Letang committed to making a hit before Burmistrov turned his back to him. That provided Letang roughly one second to make a decision on making the hit.

Does that provide Letang enough time to process the situation and adjust his hit?

UPDATE: Shanahan provides a video explanation of the hit and his decision:

According to Shanahan, he based his current decision partly on a previous fine levied against Letang for a similar hit in April.

(Photo: Jamie Sabau/Getty Images)

Comments (5)

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written by Boom Shaka, October 18, 2011 - 04:26 PM

Unreal! I am trying to view this objectively, but with the precedent set in the Malone case earlier this year, you would think, would dictate against suspension.

The same logic used in not giving Malone a suspension, was clearly not applied in this case, because as you said Seth: "...it appears as if Letang committed to making a hit before Burmistrov turned his back to him"

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written by RobotJaxxon, October 18, 2011 - 04:38 PM

Instead of this new discipline experiment showing exactly why player are suspended, to make it clearer to players what they should and should not do, all it is doing is making it clearer how arbitrarily they decide what rules and evidence they'll lean on. As a fan, this video confuses me when compared to all the other videos that have been put out. Hopefully it's not as confusing to the players.

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written by bastage42, October 18, 2011 - 05:01 PM

I was wondering if the Spezza hit would have impacted this one (no pun intended).

Looks like we're really going to see how deep we are on D, rather than just how deep we are in ... trouble.

I don't have a big issue with this, so long as they're consistent with it now and in May/June. But it is pretty stern, and will take some adjusting to. If it reduces dangerous hits, that's a good thing.

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written by jethro, October 18, 2011 - 05:25 PM

"Failure to minimize contact" seems applicable here. You can rationalize the contact to the back since Burmistrov does turn. But that doesn't excuse the follow through when Letang continues and extends the arms driving him into the boards.

I'm guessing it would have been 1 game without the prior incident. So this seems reasonable.

Two (semi-related) other points: 1) who is this "LeTang" mentioned in the headline of the PG online story? and 2) If the Pens knew Orpik was going to miss so many games, I'm surprised they didn't keep Morrow for the first 9 or 10 games (and return him to juniors before his 1st year contract trigger was hit). The answer is likely that they expected him back last week.

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written by myyrdin, October 18, 2011 - 07:05 PM

I think it was the "failure to minimize contact" thing as well. It's a lot easier to say in slow motion though.

I'm not quite sure about no sudden moves though. I
think he clearly turns his skates completely and thus changes the angle for Letang. His upper body doesn't change it's orientation to the boards but his skates clearly turn. The effect of the turn would not have been apparent to Letang until it was too late.

This used to be called a stupid play because you're going to get your head smashed into the boards. A lot more suspensions will happen if they keep calling this. Maybe Letang could have let up a little.. I'm not convinced though. Very grey call.

I still can't see why they didn't call the hit on Cooke.

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