San Jose’s Marc-Edouard Vlasic now knows everyone is listening when he speaks, especially the NHL.
Head of player safety Brendan Shanahan heard Vlasic’s complaints about the punishment handed down to Phil Kessel and offers up an explanation for his decision. David Pollak of the San Jose Mercury News dug in and got the story.
“My door is always open to any player. If he truly wants an explanation, he can reach out to me anytime and I will give him an explanation. That is an easy route and not something that he necessarily needs to do through the newspaper.
“On each incident, we dissect the details. We use our experience to try to establish intent, degree of recklessness. For someone to say the judgment is too lenient of the judgment is too harsh, that’s perfectly acceptable because this is a subjective job and we respect that other people have other opinions.”
Shanahan teaches him a lesson and lets him know he should do it man-to-man instead of through the media. Safe to assume Shanahan didn’t like reading complaints from another player about how he’s doing his job. He even went so far as to explain past actions involving Vlasic.
People may not agree with how Shanahan doles out punishment, but he’s owning every bit of it.