COLUMBUS, Ohio — Imagine if George Parros had been in charge of dispensing supplemental discipline for the NFL last season when Myles Garrett went whack-a-mole on Mason Rudolph with a helmet. 

The fact the Steelers’ quarterback was unfazed by the vicious blow and kept coming after the Browns’ defensive lineman might have been enough for Garrett to escape with little more than a fine. 

This is not to single out Parros, a former NHL tough guy, because seemingly everyone who’s been in charge of the league’s department of player safety has subscribed to the same warped thinking. It’s how Tom Wilson’s outrageous conduct Monday night at Madison Square Garden only drew a $5,000 fine. 

Never mind the Capitals’ repeat and unrepentant offender drove a prone Pavel Buchnevich face down on the ice and sucker punched him after a goal-mouth scramble. Never mind he ripped the helmet off Rangers’ star Artemi Panarin in the ensuing fracas and threw him violently to the ice, opening up a gash near his eye. 

Hey, nobody got seriously hurt, right? It’s the kind of Neanderthal thinking that drives me crazy about the NHL. If Panarin had landed on his head instead of his shoulder, he could have fractured his skull, or worse. Then, Wilson would be facing a lengthy suspension. 

But the moment Panarin got up and skated to the penalty box, I knew the Capitals’ winger wouldn’t miss a game for his thuggishness. That’s how the league operates. That’s how the league always has operated. The NHL worries less about the act and more about the outcome.

Panarin did leave the game with a lower-body injury, but the Rangers announced he would be “OK” and that there was no serious damage done. That’s all Parros needed to hear. In fact, Wilson’s $5,000 fine was levied because of his treatment of Buchnevich. It had nothing to do with nearly maiming one of last season’s Hart Trophy finalists. 

The outrage was loud and predictable the moment Parros rendered his verdict. It then fell on the Rangers to seek their own frontier justice two nights later in a fight-filled rematch. 

It’s long past time for the NHL to start applying common sense to rulings on supplemental discipline. Injury or lack of it should not guide the decision-making process when judging violent conduct. And this doesn’t just go for Wilson and his long history of transgressions. 

The NFL has its own failings, but its czars of discipline saw Garrett’s moment of madness for what it was. They didn’t need to witness Rudolph bloodied, battered and unconscious to know the Browns’ edge rusher had committed a heinous act. Garrett was gone for the remainder of the 2019 season.  

The NHL saw what happened Monday night as a routine after-the-whistle scrum in which Panarin engaged Wilson as a means of coming to the aid of a teammate. That Panarin wasn’t concussed or stretchered off made it all seem like boys being boys. (And if Panarin hadn’t jumped into the pile, he would have been criticized for not standing up for one of his own.) 

I’d like to think the NHL reviews the handling of this incident and sets a new course for the future. Yeah, right. There’s a better chance of Wilson inheriting Parros’ job after he retires. 


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