NHL sends message: Fighting late in game is worse than swinging stick like lumberjack

When it comes to the NHL, the messaging is crystal clear.

Getting into a fight late in a hockey game is worse than trying to break another player’s arm with a hockey stick.

That’s the message that has been sent by the league’s department of player safety, head manned by former NHL fighter George Parros, after upholding an automatic one-game suspension to Edmonton Oilers defenceman Darnell Nurse and levying an equal suspension to Vegas Golden Knights defenceman Alex Pietrangelo. For those new to this saga, things got off the rails late in game four between the two clubs on Wednesday night leading to a levy of supplemental discipline Thursday.

Pietrangelo, doing his best impersonation of lumberjack Paul Bunyan, laid a heavy-handed, over-the-head chop on the arm of Edmonton Oilers forward Leon Draisaitl with under two minutes to go in the game. The puck was on the other side of the ice, and play had already moved in that direction, too.

“This is slashing,” the league’s department of player safety said in a video explaining the suspension that will keep Pietrangelo out of game five.

But what’s worse, the NHL feels, is that Darnell Nurse instigating a fight with Golden Knights defenceman Nic Hague with 40 seconds left in the game is actually worse. According to the league’s rulebook, this was worthy of an automatic one-game suspension and a $10,000 fine for that club’s head coach, even though Nurse and Hague had jarred back and forth for multiple games and dropped their gloves at the same time.

Parros chose to uphold that suspension and fine Thursday morning in what’s a heavier punishment towards the Oilers rather than that of the Golden Knights.

“I saw the play going on, I saw Darnell wrap somebody up, two guys bear-hugging each other,” said Oilers head coach Jay Woodcroft, whose wallet is a little lighter tonight, after Wednesday’s game. “I saw their player with his gloves off first. I saw their player throw eight punches. So to me, that’s two willing combatants.

“It’s not like somebody was turtled up in a ball. I saw two willing combatants. And as I said, I believe it started with the Vegas Golden Knight player 14 had his gloves off first and he threw the first eight punches.”

You be the judge.