Marchand Suspended 5 Games

This seems..excessive.

 

Reputation suspension.

 

Good to see we're back to the dart board. Time for the appeal.

 

For those of you who weren’t following along in the game thread and know what this is about.

 

5 games is bullshit

 

This is well earned. 5 games is the max. He needs to knock that shit off.

 

Five games is fair. He elbowed the guy in the side of the head intentionally and has a long rapsheet. He has a dumb side he just can’t kick.

 

I think 5 is excessive, had figured 1-3. I figure he deserves 3 - or said another way I would want 3 if someone did that to Krejci or Krug. I hope he appeals it and it is lowered to 3.

Agreed with others, he needs to knock off this part of his game. The team doesn't need it, and given the timing with McAvoy down, it is selfish to have done it and weaken the team.

 

I think he needs to appeal and hope it gets reduced. I figured 3 max based on reputation.

Maybe they did 5 expecting an appeal and reduction. And that means next time 5 will stick.

 

He should skip the All Star game. This is nonsense. In a league where Crosby can spear people in the nuts and not blink an eye.

 

He deserves 5 because of how totally unneeded it was. He went out of his way to elbow him in the face. Just an incredibly stupid move that was selfish and short sighted.

I was hoping for less, but I’m nonplussed by the five games. He was an idiot for doing it.

 

It's probably 2 games too much but hopefully now he realizes the league is going to hammer him if he does this shit. He's not Crosby, he's not going to get away with whatever he wants.

 

Not much to complain about IMO given how often he finds himself in these unnecessary situations.

I thought he'd get off lighter given some of the plausible deniability but can't say he hasn't earned this.

 

Five seems pretty excessive to me given the nature of the elbow. It’s not as if he ran a guy into the boards or it wasn’t in the middle of a play. I get that he has a history but five just seems like it’s too tied to the past. I assume it’s designed to morph into 3-4.

 

This is where I'm at. I expected less, but I'm sick of this shit from him. Maybe 5 gets the point across.

 

I'm ok with it too, fuck him if he's going to keep doing this shit and taking himself out of the lineup.

 

If anyone did this same thing to Bergeron, we'd be pissed. 5 is fine.

 

I’m fine with 5. It was worth 2-3 on its own and he gets extra for his extensive history. He does this once a year. He can’t shake it, and it sucks.

Also, he can’t appeal.

 

Does anyone see a bit of a toe-pick by Marchand just before he falls and swings his arm/elbow? When I initially saw the play I thought he was trying to stop and caught an edge that sent him flying off balance and happened to make contact with Johansson. After seeing more replays from different angles, I still buy the toe-pick but I'll also buy into the exaggerated flailing of the arms. I would have given him 3 games but reputation....

 

Look I love Marchand but it was a deliberate vicious elbow to the head and he is a repeat offender. Commentators here on Sportsnet have been discussing it all day and think he is fortunate to have gotten only 5. He has been known to give cheap shots and he is too good a player to be doing that shit.

 

The only "I'm really not-guilty" explanation is that he (Brad) was expecting hard contact from the NJ defender as he broke right to avoid the keeper. The defender pulled up safely. So rather than taking a shoulder to shoulder shot (in which Brad's arm would never have risen above the shoulder), the checking motion of Brad's arm continued...unchecked... and extended up and into the side of the defenseman's head.

And then there are the 99 reasons to suspect guilt and explain the cheapness of the elbow.

 

Yeah, I can't disagree with this too much. Head shots need to be removed from the game, and there was clearly intent behind the elbow. Maybe he didn't mean to hit him in the head, but he did, so he needs to suffer the consequences.

 

Five suspensions before this one. The league says that was a factor. It should be. The next one is going to be longer.

I hope Cassidy, Bergeron and everyone on the team make it clear to Marchand at every opportunity how much he is letting his teammates down.

 

I just wonder if he's capable of controlling himself. It's impulse control, not stopping a premeditated plot, so how does he change in the heat of battle? I really don't know.

 

And if he does pull it off, and relax that part of how he functions, does it have any spillover affect on the rest of his performance? While it’s understandable to say that a little impulse control shouldn’t detract from everything else, maybe things aren’t that readily divisible.

 

Do you mean like the dropoff in production from missing 5 games?

 

Ha. No I mean that sometimes the jerk in a player is all bound up in everything else, so if you tame the jerk, everything else suffers, too. But you probably know what I meant.

 

He got what he deserved. As stated before, if someone did that to Bergeron we would be furious.

Grow up Brad.

 

Someone on T&R just said you can't appeal 5 and under. Is that true? Not sure I've ever heard that before.

Here's the thing about him getting 5. In a vacuum given history and all it's fine I suppose. But it just continues the completely arbitrary nature of nhl discipline. Yes he's been suspended before. But at least one was something that others doing the same thing haven't been suspended for on the basis that they hadn't been suspended before. Which doesn't really make sense. Rinaldo skates up and sucker punches someone with intent and gets 6. That's just 1 game worse than an elbow during play (or at least right as a whistle went)? Brown gets nothing for cross checking from behind into the boards. Ovechkin boards Carlo, knocking him out of the playoffs, and gets nothing because he's not a "repeat offender" despite getting nothing for not being a repeat offender over and over and over agin. And on and on and on. DOPS is a joke and everyone knows it. Why is this so hard to fix?

 

Players can only appeal 6+.

 

Thanks. There's my thing learned for the day - time to go to bed!

 

Yeah. I think it was intentional and I think he got off light.

 

It was intentional but let's remember Rinaldo only got 6 games for what he did a couple weeks ago. 5 is about right.

 

I don't know that he was intentionally trying to hit the guy in the head with his elbow. I do think that he was intentionally using his elbow to body up on the guy.

So, he was intentionally elbowing a guy. That elbow ended up in the guy's head. Whether he meant for the elbow to connect with Johansson's head (as opposed to his shoulder or chest) is really immaterial to me.

It's a reputation penalty because Marchand has earned a reputation. There is nothing to complain about. He's an extremely talented but stupidly dirty player. That's his game and I don't know how you can argue otherwise.

 

Who cares about intention? If we're going to be serious about head injuries, then they needed to lay the hammer on a guy with a reputation for bullshit.

 

Exactly. Marchand reaps what he sowed. Stop doing shitty stuff like this and he won't have to worry about being suspended. It's bad for the team, and it tarnishes the reputation of a guy who works hard and is supremely talented.

 

The repeat offender rules are collectively bargained so that throws a monkey wrench in the works a bit, but I’m with you that the “repeating non-repeat offender” stuff makes me crazy. Hopefully the next CBA tightens up that if a player is constantly having to justify themselves to DOPS that it starts to count against them in some way vs only having been suspended before.

That said superstars are always going to get more of the benefit of the doubt just because.

 

I can't find a place to link it from, but Marchand gave what was, in my opinion, a seriously gutsy interview yesterday (I saw it on the Bruins Facebook page). He stood in front of his locker for 5 minutes getting grilled by the media, and facing various questions from letting his teammates down to players in the league not respecting him. He answered every question very candidly, and it seemed honestly ("The league changed from when I came up, and I didn't adjust fast enough" is a snippet).

I absolutely think he deserves the suspension he has gotten, but I think most of us would agree that he has worked hard to clean up his game. I don't think he was trying to decapitate Johanssen (like it sort of looks like from the top down view), but he of all people needs to be a lot more careful of where his elbows, and head, an stick, and legs are, because of his history.

 

I don't understand the criticism of the NHL here. Marchand elbowed the guy in the head. While I wouldn't call it a true intent to injure, throwing the elbow was reckless and unnecessary. And resulted in a player being injured. Marchand has been through this before, so that counts against him as well.

There is nothing illogical or "a joke" about the suspension. It was deserved. And it certainly wouldn't be described by anyone as "light" either.

 

Just watched the Marchand interview in Twitter. I will agree he showed some nerve answering the questions head on. I does sound like he understands the situation he put himself and the organization in.

We can only hope he puts that over the edge play in the past. He has worked too hard to reach such a high level of play and value. Fingers crossed.

Check out @NHLBruins’s Tweet:

 

If you could describe the actual logic was used to reach 5 games, I would be all ears. The DPS is a black box whose actions are rife with inconsistencies.

And for the record, I'm fine with 5 games. I would just love to know how they got there outside of throwing a dart and adjusting up and down based off various criteria.

 

If he wanted to move the needle a bit on his reputation, he should skip the ASG. It's also probably the right thing to do. He's going to be a sideshow. (I would not be against a rule that says that if you happen to be ineligible to play at ASG time, you dont play in the ASG).

 

Quick thoughts

Lucky it isn't longer, multiple suspensions eyc

Interview was pretty good, but almost all he talked about was hurting his team. He should have returned to the injury risk.

I hope nobody here wanting fewer than three was arguing for a suspension in Gronk injury.

 

ASG reception was amusing.

God he’s a dumbshit ... but he’s our dumbshit.

 

If he was bigger, he'd be a lunkhead. Dumbshit will have to do.

 

Could it be as simple as that the player can’t appeal on less than 6? Not that that’s right or wrong, but simply ‘give him the max we don’t have to waste time listening to him about it’.

I only follow hockey tangentially, but I’m aware of his reputation and think five is certainly called for. That was a cheap blow and we’ve all seen what Savard has gone through. There’s no place for it, imo.

 

n/m. Technology defeats me

 

Similar to the logic the DPS used when Neal got 5 games for kneeing Marchand in the head. At the time, Neal wasn't a "repeat offender" as defined in the CBA, but he had a history.

 

Sounds right as to the rationale. It was in some sense a maximum penalty for yet another incident. Next time he'll have appeal rights, because he's going to get more than 5.