Jamie Nye: Another black eye for NHL discipline

The National Hockey League Department of Player Safety once again made a mockery of its intended purpose, giving Alex Pietrangelo just one game for his two-handed slash on Leon Draisaitl.

The NHL has criteria when deciding a suspension: Type of conduct, injury, offender’s history, game situation, and other factors.

Well, we know Pietrangelo is an NHL “good guy” and thankfully he didn’t injure the Edmonton Oilers’ star in Wednesday’s playoff game. That was reason enough for the head of player safety, George Parros, to reduce what should be an automatic multi-game suspension to just a measly game.

However, the type of conduct and the situation of the game should have weighed heavily in favour of a longer suspension.

The Vegas Golden Knights defenceman forcefully brought down his stick from over his head and with clear intent on an unassuming player. The act was purposeful, deliberate and could have caused significant injury.

But in the eyes of the player safety department, it only matters if the player is injured. Well, sometimes.

Remember, this is the same player safety department that didn’t suspend the Seattle Kraken’s Jordan Eberle for fracturing the neck of the Colorado Avalanche’s Andrew Cogliano in Round 1.

Again, it was a mockery of the adjudication process on what is or what is not suspendable.

It’s why I joke often that it appears Parros just has a carnival wheel in his office that he spins to see how many games a player should miss — although I think the carnival wheel might be more consistent.

An act like Pietrangelo’s is an incident where “department of player safety” should come out with a clear statement that stick infractions, no matter the injury status of the victim, will be met with swift, decisive and harsh consequences.

Instead, the NHL waited until well into Thursday night before announcing the suspension and gave fans and players even less reason to believe it has the best interest in player safety when handing out suspensions.

But of course, the NHL’s complex mathematics also likely weighed the potential game(s) Pietrangelo would miss if his suspension went beyond one game.

You know, poor Pietrangelo might have to miss Game 6 and a potential elimination game if the suspension was beyond the single game.

As for a three-game suspension — GASP! — well, such a penalty would guarantee Pietrangelo missed a potential Game 7. And we can’t have that, as we learned with Eberle’s lack of suspension.

Eberle hit Cogliano into the boards in Game 6, so any suspension would have made him miss Game 7, and I’m sure in the eyes of the DoPS, that would be equivalent to a five-game suspension in the regular season. That would have been a justified suspension if Eberle fracured Cogliano’s neck in January.

I’d call for George Parros to be fired, but what’s the point? Every head of the player safety department has been failing when it comes to the need for consistency from the top of the department. Instead, the most consistent thing is the inconsistency.

Pietrangelo’s single game will be a tough pill to swallow for Oiler fans who will see Darnell Nurse also miss a game for — it reads here — starting a fight in the last five minutes of a game.

Yes, starting a fight in the NHL — where fighting is still very much acceptable and at times welcomed — is the equivalent of a two-handed axe chop to the wrists of the other team’s top goal scorer.

While I hesitate to say it’s open season now for blatant two-handed slashes, officials have allowed worse than that in the NHL playoffs.

And it takes away from what we’ve seen so far this post-season.

The action on the ice is amazing to watch. It’s too bad that the head office in New York allows these dirty, cheap and dangerous plays to go unpunished or with severely diminished consequences.