If the one-game suspension given to Drew Doughty after Game 1 of the LA-Vegas series was to set a precedent, then there were a few players who should’ve been under review for supplementary discipline after the second night of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Tom Wilson escaped punishment for his check on Alexander Wennberg, which he said cost the Capitals the game. Nazem Kadri is having a hearing and Leafs Nation is bracing to be without him for at least Game 2 and possibly more.
Nashville’s Ryan Johansen also threw a borderline suspendable hit on Colorado defenceman Tyson Barrie, though he too escaped being disciplined by the league, as it was ruled to be a “full body hit.”
“You saw what happened to Doughty. There’s got to be some consistency,” Avalanche GM Joe Sakic told the Denver Post on Friday.
Barrie was asked about the hit after Thursday’s game and declined to comment further because he hadn’t seen it on replay yet. After Friday’s skate, the defenceman was asked again about the hit following news that Johansen had escaped punishment.
“If those are the hits you’re allowed to make, then maybe you take one or two runs at guys that you might get away with,” he told BSN Denver’s Adrian Dater.
Johansen was not penalized on the play.
“I think it was a little bit late and high,” Avalanche forward Mikko Rantanen said. “But the league makes the decisions and I don’t have anything to say about that.”
Barrie and Sakic both agreed they didn’t see much of a difference between Johansen’s hit and the one that earned Doughty a one-game sitdown.
“I was shooting and I didn’t see him coming at all,” Barrie told the Post. “I kind of came from the side and he definitely caught my head. I’m not sure if they determined that he hit my shoulder or whatever it was first. But it’s part of the game and that’s in the league’s hands so you can’t really control it.”
According to Dater, Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar won’t make any lineup changes ahead of Game 2.
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