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Everyone’s still upset with NHL Department of Player Safety

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Eddie Olczyk believes that Drew Doughty's hit on William Carrier was a hockey play gone wrong and that there were worse infractions from other playoff series that were more deserving of suspension.

The 2018 Stanley Cup playoffs are two days old and one of the league’s greatest ongoing feuds is already starting to reach its boiling point.

No, not the Penguins and Flyers, I’m talking about everybody in the NHL vs. The Department of Player Safety.

Basically, nobody is happy.
[NBC’s Stanley Cup Playoff Hub]

George Parros and his staff have had plenty of plays to examine over the past 72 hours and have already handed out one suspension, a one-game ban for Los Angeles Kings defenseman Drew Doughty for his hit on William Carrier. It seems like a given that another suspension is coming on Friday when the league conducts its hearing with Toronto Maple Leafs forward Nazem Kadri for his reckless run at a completely defenseless Tommy Wingels.

We still do not know what is going to happen with Kadri, but the decisions the league has already made have definitely been met with some resistance.

On Friday, Doughty had a chance to speak about his suspension and seemed pretty frustrating he will not be playing on Friday night. Well, really frustrated.

“There are obviously a lot of things I want to say here, but first off, I hope Carrier’s OK. I see he’s in the lineup, he’s not injured, so he’s OK, and I never intended to hit him in the head,” Doughty said. “As far as the suspension goes, I don’t think for one second that that is suspension-worthy. On the hearing and whatnot, we came to the conclusion that I did not intend to hit the head. I did get his shoulder, and the thing we kind of didn’t agree on was that he didn’t move or alter position to make him vulnerable for the hit, which you can clearly see in the video that he plants on his right leg, going off his left, opens up his left shoulder and tries to jump to the inside, and that’s why he ends up in the middle of the ice. I don’t think it’s suspension-worthy. I think it’s B.S., really. It’s awful, and watching the games last night, I guess he’s got four or five more [suspensions] to give.

“You got to play physical. What, you want me to let that guy go to the net and get a scoring chance? I’m not going to let him do that. Like I said, I did not at all intend to hit him in the head, and I 100 percent got his shoulder first. I definitely hit the head after that, but maybe a penalty call or something like that. But a suspension, and in the playoffs? I don’t think so. Like I said, I saw four hits last night that deserve more games than that, so we’ll see what [Parros] does now.”


His coach, John Stevens, backed him up and said that Doughty defended the play exactly the way they would expect him to defend it, and that as long as he is on the earth he is going to “agree to disagree with the decision” by the league.

But the Kings aren’t the only team that is a little angry on Friday.

The Colorado Avalanche are also pretty displeased after Nashville Predators forward Ryan Johansen was not suspended for his hit on Tyson Barrie on Thursday night.

In the NHL’s view, Barrie’s head is not the principal point of contact and it was simply a body check, as opposed to the Doughty-Carrier hit where the head was the principal point of contact. That results in Doughty missing a game and Johansen being available in Game 2.

The Avalanche, naturally, disagreed with that assessment with general manager Joe Sakic calling for consistency in the league’s rulings, a common complaint and criticism when it comes to the DoPS.

Barrie also shared his thoughts, via the Denver Post:

“I didn’t see him coming at all. He 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,” he said. “But it’s part of the game and that’s in the league’s hands so you can’t really control it. I think you move on. If those are the hits you’re allowed to take then maybe you take one or two runs at guys that you might get away with. But you just got to move on. We got a long series here and there’s not much point in dwelling on that.”

That was not the only play from Thursday’s games that received some attention.

Late in the Washington-Columbus game the Blue Jackets lost Alexander Wennberg after he was on the receiving end of a tough hit from Capitals forward Tom Wilson. Wilson was penalized on the play. Given that Columbus tied the game on the ensuing power play and then won it in overtime it was a pretty decisive play in the game and was pretty damaging to the Capitals. But it will not result in a suspension from the NHL, in part because there were no clear camera angles that could allow the NHL to determine whether or not Wilson made direct contact with Wennberg’s head.

Columbus’ Josh Anderson, who was ejected in the first period of that game (resulting in a pair of Capitals power play goals), will also avoided supplemental discipline from the NHL. Given that the NHL seems to weigh playoff games more heavily that regular season games when it comes to supplemental discipline it is not a surprising that Anderson avoided anything further. His ejection happened earlier enough in the game that it was probably deemed enough of a punishment.

When it comes to the rest of the decisions ... well, there is always going to be pushback and disagreement when these decisions end up hurting a team, and it’s already been a tough, controversial week for the DoPS. That has to be mildly concerning because at this point the Penguins and Flyers have only played one game and Brad Marchand hasn’t gone full Brad Marchand yet.

The playoffs are still early, though, so there is plenty of time for everything to go completely off the rails.

Good luck everybody when it does.

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Adam Gretz is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @AGretz.