Frazer McLaren NHL Suspension Video

Photo courtesy thestar.com

Last night in Toronto, an incident occurred in a game between the Ottawa Senators and the Toronto Maple Leafs. Early in the first period, Frazer McLaren of the Maple Leafs and Dave Dziurzynski of the Senators dropped their gloves and exchanged blows, and before too long, McLaren struck Dziurzynski flush on the cheek, knocking the Senators player out.

This was a violation of Rule 46 - Fighting. McLaren was assessed a major penalty on the play.

Dziurzynski was injured on the play, suffering a serious concussion. McLaren targeted Dziurzynski's head on the play, striking him with a closed fist in a clear attempt to injure his opponent.

McLaren has a history as a repeat offender. Though he has not been suspended or fined during his NHL career, he has been assessed fighting majors on five other occasions this season.

The NHL Department of Player Safety has decided to suspend Frazer McLaren for zero games.

You won't be seeing Brendan Shanahan reading from this script today, or anytime soon. My apologies if you clicked on this link and actually thought this might be for real - and yes, the title of this post is intentionally deceptive.

But ask yourself: why is it that the NHL calls fighting a 'penalty' prohibited by the rules if it comes with special exemptions for supplementary discipline? Imagine you were told that a player on the Leafs had taken a major penalty on a play last night and knocked an opponent out cold. You'd immediately assume a suspension would be forthcoming. Why is it that the league says it's getting serious about 'player safety' when it has harsh penalties for hits that were formerly 'hockey plays' but allows carte blanche for fighting?

Like most fans, I enjoy seeing fights. It's thrilling, and even though I know staged fights (as last night's was) are a bit silly, I still find them entertaining the way I enjoyed watching pro wrestling when I was thirteen. But it's time to grow up. It's amazing that the NHL has made no moves to address this after what happened to Derek Boogaard and Rick Rypien, and what will happen to other players to come. Even if it's not another death, there will be plenty more players with brain damage in the coming years.

I realize, too, that fighting is important to the players, who like having tough guys on their team to discourage players on other teams from making cheap hits. I get that - and I realize eliminating fighting outright would be very hard to do.

But the NHL ought to do something, and the obvious step is to end the staged fights. If one arises naturally after a big hit, that's one thing. But when McLaren and Dziurzynski square off 26 seconds into a game to fight for little more than entertainment, that's a fight no one needs. The NHL should realize that these incidents are embarrassing - McLaren certainly did. After the fight, he didn't raise his arms, didn't salute the crowd, didn't pantomime as if he were putting on the prizefighter's belt. He looked ashamed of what he had done, embarrassed that he had hurt someone just so people could cheer. You can bet that's not what he imagined growing up with dreams of playing in the NHL.

You know, we ain't hockey players. We've been clowns.
We've been goons! We're the freaks in a fuckin' sideshow. We're nothing but a bunch of criminals. We oughta be in jail, that's all there is.... Yeah. Really ashamed of myself. See, Ned was right. Violence is killin' this sport. It's draggin' it through the mud. If things keep up the way they are, hockey players'll be nothing but actors, punks.
Well, I'm not playin' my last game that way.  ...Yeah. It's my last game, and I wanna play it straight. No more "Nail 'em." No more "Fuck with 'em." That's finished. I wanna win that championship tonight, but I wanna win it clean. Old-time hockey, like when I got started, you know? Jeez. Toe Blake, Dit Clapper, Eddie Shore, those guys were the greats.
I don't know what to say. Christ, it's up to you.

Follow Rory Johnston (@rnfjohnston) on twitter: twitter.com/rnfjohnston

5 games for Patrick Kaleta: does it set a precedent?

Patrick Kaleta might not fear the NHL's discipline system after a 5-game suspension (photo courtesy espn.go.com)

Patrick Kaleta's hit on Brad Richards earned him a 5-game suspension, as announced this afternoon by Brendan Shanahan. The NHL elected to carry out Kaleta's hearing over the phone, meaning 5 games was the maximum suspension that could be imposed. More serious suspensions can only be imposed in an in-person hearing.

If the league does impose a suspension of six games or more, the new CBA will allow players the right of an appeal to a 'neutral arbitrator', whose "standard of review will be whether the League's finding of violation of the League Playing Rules and the penalty imposed were both supported by substantial evidence."

It's not entirely clear what 'substantial evidence' will mean. Must suspensions be based on the precedents of other suspensions? For example, if another repeat offender makes the same hit tomorrow night, is the league forced to give him the same penalty? Or do they just need to show that they have some evidence? It's not clear from this whether arbitrators will have the mandate to show seference to the NHL's decisions, or whether they'll regularly pick apart the reasoning for the suspension imposed.

This leaves open the question: what would be sufficient to warrant a 6-plus game suspension? The answer, clearly, would be a serious injury. Kaleta's history as a repeat offender (two-game suspension in 2009, a fine and a four-gamer in 2011), and the seriousness of the hit (Shanahan described it as being in an "extremely dangerous" position near the boards) both supported a serious suspension, and the NHL's tendency has been to rapidly escalate suspensions for repeat offenders.

Now that the decision has been made to cap a hit like Kaleta's at five games, the league could face a test when hand out longer suspensions. If players can argue that other hits are no worse than Kaleta's (including, for example, a hit that results in a serious injury but comes from a first-time offender), imposing a longer suspension could prove impossible.

Offer sheets: there's no point

Though Jamie Benn and PK Subban have signed, Ryan O'Reilly remains unsigned and discussion remains as to why no one has dropped an offer sheet on him yet.

It's important to think back to a quote from last week's 30 Thoughts column by Elliotte Friedman:

As one GM (not one quoted elsewhere in this blog) said: "If Nashville is going to match that offer to Shea Weber, what the [bleep's] the point of  doing one?"

There is basically no point. Though there are plenty of teams that would like to add a guy like O'Reilly, even if you offer him a multi-year deal at $5m per - I've gotta think Colorado matches. How high would you have to go to get Colorado to let him go? $6m? More? At that point, you're giving up a stack of first-rounders for a guy who's certainly an excellent player, but I don't think anyone's confusing him with Anze Kopitar. He's not a superstar.

I advocated for someone signing Michael Del Zotto to an offer sheet on this blog a couple weeks ago, and now I'm pulling back off that opinion. Yes, these guys should be getting paid more. But there's no GM who's going to want to stick his hand in that beehive because he's not going to come out with the player. Instead, he's just going to force the player's team to match.

What's worse, he then faces the problem of a 'revenge' offer sheet from the other side. Where this is a real threat or not is a question, but you can bet it's going to cause a lot of stress when it comes time to re-sign his own RFAs. Much more real is the fact that he's going to have his own players asking "you think Player X is worth $Y; why are you offering me this shit contract?" It's all a lot of headache for a very small chance of reward.

If GMs aren't colluding (and I really don't think they are), they're going to worry about their own team first. If Ryan O'Reilly is getting lowballed in Colorado - that isn't Dave Nonis or Mike Gillis or anyone else's problem. Their job is not to set a market rate, or force other teams to pay up; they're worrying about their own team first, and if Colorado is losing games in the meantime without a top-line player, all the better.

Insurance A-Fraud?

Fox's Ken Rosenthal reported this morning that the Yankees might be hoping that they can get out from under Alex Rodriguez' contract with an insurance payout. On its face, it's a fair point; they took out a sizeable insurance policy on the contract in case A-Rod suffered a career-ending injury. The plan, as Rosenthal explains, would be to find a doctor willing to call Rodriguez' hip injury "career-ending", file some paperwork, and presto, insurance payout covers 85 percent of the $114 million remaining on the deal.

Simple? Not so much. Ken probably wouldn't be surprised to hear that insurance companies are reluctant to pay out claims if they can avoid it. In particular, they (rightly) are especially reluctant to pay out where there's a whiff of fraud. You may have also heard that Alex Rodriguez doesn't have the best reputation as a truth-teller.

Furthermore, the fact that this strategy is being publicly discussed (Rosenthal reports that a 'high-ranking executive explained the same plan to him) will raise the insurer's suspicions even more. You can bet that they wouldn't simply take the opinion of a single doctor cherry-picked by Rodriguez and the Yankees.

Here's what would actually happen: the claim would get denied, and the Yankees and the insurer would end up in court. The insurer would insist on a second opinion, and demand the reports of every other doctor that checked on Rodriguez. If A-Rod had 'shopped around' until he got a favourable opinion, it's game over. The insurer could point to the conflicting opinions and show that Rodriguez can play. If that fails, they might still be able to insist that 'their' doctor examine hime, or they could send up a slew of expert witnesses to say he should be playing, or that the Yankees failed to mitigate his injuries, or that they allowed him to use PEDs, perhaps voiding the policy because of increased injury risks and so on...

You get the picture. You can't just fill out a form and magically get an insurance payout. Any insurance claim that approaches $100m - whether it's for a baseball contract or a construction project - will not be handled the same way as a car insurance claim for a fender-bender. There's too much money at stake, and any insurance company will fight tooth and nail to avoid paying out illegitimate claims. Unless his injury is worse than reported, you can bet on A-Rod being on the field in 2014.

Follow sports law and business nerd Rory Johnston (@rnfjohnston) on twitter: twitter.com/rnfjohnston