Tag: Tom Wilson

Here is every major suspension, incident, fine and hit in Tom Wilson’s NHL career

Tom Wilson has accrued quite the list of dustups in his NHL career.

Tom Wilson is, without a doubt, the NHL’s most divisive player. Washington Capitals fans, rightly, love Wilson’s pestering style of hockey while also contributing offensively in the team’s top six.

The rest of the NHL, on the other hand, despise Wilson’s dirty play and cheap shots, all while the league does nothing to curb his dangerous hitting habits. In his eight-year NHL career — spanning 569 games before the start of the 2021-22 season — Wilson has 221 points and an astounding 1,123 penalty minutes.

Yes, Wilson nearly has double the amount of penalty minutes as games played in the NHL.

With a total of five suspensions, a handful of fines, and countless dustups across the league, Wilson has been a busy player since entering the NHL in the 2013-14 season. Here is every major discipline that has been handed down to Wilson, alongside his other most notorious moments, in his NHL career to date.

Tom Wilson is already stirring up trouble for the Capitals, and it’s only the NHL preseason

Already, Tom Wilson?

The next NHL season hasn’t even started yet and Tom Wilson is already getting under hockey fans’ skin.

It’s training camp and preseason time for the NHL as the 2021-22 season continues to creep closer. On Sunday, the Washington Capitals were hosting the Boston Bruins in their first preseason game of the month when a familiar face to all hockey fans caused a bit of a dust up in the first period.

Off a faceoff, Wilson and Bruins’ Anton Blidh were fighting for position when the former got his elbow up into the face of his opposition. The exchange ended as Wilson got one final elbow back into Blidh’s face before skating away, with no penalties on either side.

A small exchange, to be sure, but one that clearly ruffled feathers on the Bruins and annoyed quite a few hockey fans because… it’s the preseason, Tom!

Wilson is no stranger to drawing ire across the NHL, especially with the way last regular season ended between the Capitals and Rangers. However, let’s hope that this year is finally the year Wilson contains himself or the NHL steps up and does it for him.

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Tom Wilson scored the first goal of the Stanley Cup playoffs, and NHL Twitter was conflicted

There was no other way the NHL playoffs were going to go this year.

The 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs have officially begun! Saturday kicked off the NHL postseason with Game 1 between the Washington Capitals and the Boston Bruins, and less than 10 minutes in we had our first goal scored by… Tom Wilson?

Yes, that Tom Wilson, who less than two weeks ago was in hot water after his unnecessary extracurriculars against the New York Rangers drew the ire of fans, media, and even the team itself! The NHL didn’t help things either by fining Wilson — who has a suspension history — just $5,000 for the whole affair.

Wilson’s antics were the biggest story coming into the playoffs this year, and it seemed the NHL’s script writers knew what they were doing as he opened the scoring for the Capitals with the first goal of the postseason.

Wilson was able to pick the top corner on Tuukka Rask off a Capitals rush to get Washington on the board early. It was a gorgeous goal to kick off the 2021 NHL playoffs, as the Capitals were able to exploit Charlie McAvoy who was without a stick on the play.

And yet, hockey fans were… conflicted over Wilson being the first goalscorer of these playoffs. The jokes poured in on Twitter quickly after Wilson’s goal.

There really was no other way the 2021 playoffs were going to begin other than Wilson scoring the first goal to the chagrin of hockey fans.

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The NHL’s hypocrisy on player safety has never been more apparent

The NHL has an egregious double standard when it comes to Tom Wilson.

There’s no question now that Tom Wilson should have been suspended for his antics on Monday night. After punching Pavel Buchnevich in the head while the New York Rangers forward was lying face down on the ice and ragdolling Artemi Panarin so badly his season ended on the play, Wilson came away from that debacle with just a measly $5,000 fine.

That’s quite literally pocket change for the Washington Capitals forward, who was slated to make $4.1 million in salary this year.

Meanwhile, in the fallout from Wilson’s lack of suspension, the Rangers fired the team’s general manager and president a mere 24 hours after the team posted a scathing remark decrying the decision. A convenient time to clean house for a team said to be “underachieving” this season, though conventional wisdom and the stats say otherwise.

Oh, and the Rangers were fined $250,000 for the statement the team posted on Twitter, one which NHL commissioner Gary Bettman called “unacceptable.”

Not only that, the Rangers and Capitals played a brawl-filled mess of a game on Wednesday, which saw Wilson leave after the first period due to an upper body injury and Buchnevich high-stick Anthony Mantha in the neck to the tune of… a one-game suspension.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOiDff2vofk&ab_channel=SPORTSNET

At this point, you just have to laugh. Surely, the NHL’s Department of Player Safety is engaging in some sort of performance art where Wilson, the fire-starter of the blaze that has raged through the league this past week, got the lightest punishment.

And yet, here we are.

It’s more than fair to say that the NHL’s hypocrisy in regards to player safety has never had a grander stage than this. We’ve seen pushback on the league’s rulings in the past, but that was nothing compared to the cascade of dominoes that have fallen in these last few days.

Take Wilson’s $5,000 fine and compare it to the league’s latest two suspension rulings that happened immediately after. Philadelphia’s Shayne Gostisbehere was suspended two games for boarding Pittsburgh’s Mark Friedman, while Buchnevich got one for his high stick on Mantha up at the neck.

Both were undoubtedly well-deserved suspensions in their own rights, but coming immediately after Wilson’s fine — and given the pair’s lack of suspension history compared to Wilson’s laundry list — makes this ruling even more absurd.

To drive the point home even further, Wilson — the instigator here —  leaves this whole affair a mere $5,000 poorer, while Buchnevich — the retaliator — has to sit for a game and forfeit $28,017 in salary, nearly six times more than Wilson.

The most frustrating part is that this all could have been avoided had George Parros, the head of the Department of Player Safety, given Wilson even just a one-game suspension. Or had the Capitals pulled Wilson before Wednesday night’s game in preparation for the inevitable onslaught that was coming. It’s highly unlikely the Rangers would have issued their rebuke in the manner they did, or that Wednesday’s game would have had nearly that amount of carnage if Wilson was given the bare minimum punishment.

Not only that, in the fallout of this whole situation, it came to light that weeks ago, Parros did not even want to suspend Wilson after he sent Bruins’ Brandon Carlo to the hospital with a concussion in early March. Wilson only received a seven-game suspension after Bettman stepped in.

As the dust settles, this incident seemingly hasn’t changed much league-wide. The NHL isn’t making modifications to the Department of Player Safety and in fact, support for Parros and the department as a whole seems to be on the rise.

According to TSN’s Frank Seravalli, who reached out to about half of the league’s general managers, not one believed Parros was unfit for the position.

“I don’t think what Wilson did was a suspendible act,” another GM said. “I think that statement is part of the problem with society right now. Everyone wants everyone to be fired. That isn’t how it works and that’s not how you do it. George has the worst job in hockey. On every decision, one team is happy and one team is pissed.”

It’s hard to understand, from a player safety point of view, why the upper crust of the NHL — from the Department of Player Safety, to the general managers, to the Capitals themselves — won’t be harsher on Wilson while doling out correct and just punishments to others. Wilson’s suspension history — he has five going back to the 2017 preseason — wasn’t even factored into this decision, as the league first takes into account the legality of the play before even discussing a player’s past transgressions.

Given Wilson’s long and checkered history with running afoul of the NHL’s rules, the league’s current system makes no sense and is, in fact, detrimental to player safety as a whole. It’s a system designed for parity for the common NHL player, to give everyone their fair shake should they find themselves breaking one of the NHL’s rules and putting another player at risk.

However, at this point, Wilson is not your common, everyday case for the NHL anymore. Wilson crossed into Matt Cooke, Raffi Torres, John Scott, Sean Avery, and Daniel Carcillo territory some time ago, and it’s likely that his only way out is through either extensive rehabilitation to change his ways (like Cooke) or being essentially suspended out of the league (like Torres).

No meaningful lessons were learned here by Wilson. In fact, it’s likely he got some positive reinforcement out of all of this, considering how he ended up losing just $5,000 at the end of the day. He punched a defenseless player, then tossed a much smaller player around — after his helmet had fallen off — in the ensuing scrum.

If this is the precedent that the NHL and Parros are setting here, what exactly is the point of having an entire department devoted to player safety? Clearly Parros and the league have shown they’re more interested in protecting old-school, supposed “tough” players like Wilson rather than actually making difficult calls that would make the game safer.

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Rangers-Capitals game quickly became a brawl-filled mess over the Tom Wilson debacle

And the NHL could have possibly avoided all of this.

The Washington Capitals road rematch against the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday began exactly as many hockey fans expected it to — with a brawl.

In Monday night’s game in New York, Capitals winger Tom Wilson took a cheap shot to the back of Rangers’ Pavel Buchnevich’s head before body-slamming and injuring Artemi Panarin and starting a brawl near the crease. It was a violent moment that people have come to expect from Wilson, but rather than being suspended — and Wilson is all too familiar with lengthy suspensions — the NHL handed him a $5,000 fine.

And that didn’t sit too well with a lot of people, the Rangers included, and they blasted the NHL Department of Player Safety for not suspending Wilson.

And then the second the puck dropped for the teams’ rematch Wednesday, the gloves came off for an all-out line brawl.

It was an absolute mess with six penalties handed out literally within the first second of the game. And it’s likely that this ridiculousness could have been avoided if the league responded more appropriately to Wilson’s dangerous conduct in Monday’s game.

But the fighting didn’t stop there because Rangers’ Brendan Smith made sure to go after Wilson too, leading to more fighting, more penalties and an extremely crowded penalty box within the game’s first few minutes.

And, as Sportsnet Stats noted, this was the first game in NHL history to have six fights within the first five minutes and the first to have six fights in the first period since 1989.

By the time the first period ended, the teams racked up 20 penalties worth 100 minutes total.

It was a wild first period, and again, as many hockey fans noted, this chaos possibly could have been prevented or at least mitigated if the NHL dealt Wilson a harsher punishment beyond a $5,000 fine. And none of this is anything the league, the Rangers or the Capitals should be proud of.

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The NHL’s decision to fine Tom Wilson just $5,000 is a complete joke

Really??

If it was any other player besides Tom Wilson who had cheapshotted New York Rangers forward Pavel Buchnevich in the crease with a hit to the back of his head and then slammed a helmet-less Artemi Panarin to the ice, a $5,000 fine (the maximum allowed by the collective bargaining agreement) might seem like too little, but still within the realm of justified.

But this was Tom Wilson.

That’s the same Washington Capitals forward who has, time and time again, delivered controversial hits and dangerous moves.  He’s been suspended five times, including for 20 games for a hit to Oskar Sundqvist in 2018 that was reduced to 14 contests after an appeal. The league banned him seven games for an awful, reckless hit to the head of Brandon Carlo in March.

So why doesn’t history suddenly count here? Any credibility earned from punishing previous infractions — and there wasn’t much to begin with — is gone.

Wilson’s actions — and lack of remorse, with the way he flexed in the penalty box — and history were more than enough to justify the league coming down hard on the forward. At what point does the NHL say enough is enough? Again, this is not a fourth liner with no prior history bashing a defenseless player’s head into the ice.

This isn’t about the NHL protected Panarin, one of the league’s best and most exciting players. It’s about the league protecting every player. Exactly zero professional hockey players should be put in a position where they are wrestled by someone 50 pounds heavier, lose the helmet protecting their head and brain, and are nevertheless tossed to the ice and subjected to punches. Hockey is a physical game, sure, but that can’t be OK. Not anymore.

It should be a suspension, and — at least — it should be the rest of the season and postseason. Only that sends the right message.

Now, the NHL is setting up a situation that’s dangerous for both the Rangers and for Wilson himself. The Caps and Rangers play Wednesday night, and you can bet New York players will want some sort of revenge (right or not) for Wilson’s disgusting display (even if you believe he deserves what might be coming to him, that’s not right either). Someone is going to get hurt badly and it would be on the NHL if Gary Bettman and Co. don’t do more here.

By the way, the Capitals are just as culpable here, and they should, at the very least, scratch Wilson for Wednesday’s game. Check out what coach Peter Laviolette said after the game (via ESPN):

“I thought it was just a scrum. Physical play. There was something going on originally with the goalie and jamming at the goalie. We had a bunch of players jump in there. It happens a lot.”

But when it happens and it involves Wilson, it goes beyond “it happens a lot.” And the message here from both the Capitals and the league is they’re just fine with his violent, remorseless antics.

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Capitals’ Tom Wilson in hot water once again after punching Pavel Buchnevich in head

Is Tom Wilson headed for another suspension?

Tom Wilson may very well be facing yet another lengthy suspension from the NHL less than two months after his last. On Monday, during the Washington Capitals game against the New York Rangers, Wilson drew the ire of his opponents — and hockey fans — after unnecessary extracurriculars against Pavel Buchnevich and Artemi Panarin.

In the second period, with the Rangers up 3-2 over the Capitals, Wilson clocked Buchnevich in the back of the head with a punch while the forward was laying face down on the ice after the whistle. The punch, and Wilson’s subsequent shove, ignited a scrum wherein the Capitals forward body slammed Panarin to the ice, before giving the Ranger a few punches to the head as well.

In total, another dirty incident with Wilson at the forefront.

Wilson, upon entering the penalty box, was seen flexing his muscles and smiling while chirping at the Rangers.

The fallout of Wilson’s extracurriculars was a 10-minute misconduct — and 14 total penalty minutes — but no ejection from the game. Meanwhile, Panarin did not return for the third period of the game due to a lower-body injury.

After the game, the Capitals engaged in a bit of trolling with this meme of Wilson.

https://twitter.com/Capitals/status/1389396106648244226

In postgame interviews, Rangers forward Mika Zibanejad called Wilson’s antics “horrible.”

The incident is yet another in a very long list of illegal plays from Wilson. Just two months ago on March 7, Wilson was suspended seven games for a reckless hit that sent Boston Bruins defenseman Brandon Carlo to the hospital. Previously, Wilson had kept his record clean for a few years, with his last suspension happening in October 2018.

At this point, the onus is on the NHL for curbing Wilson’s incredibly stupid and dirty habits by throwing the book at him. Wilson’s biggest suspension — 20 games — came in that 2018 incident that saw him blindside Oskar Sundqvist with a hit to the head. After that suspension, Wilson played 151 clean — by the NHL’s standards — games over the course of two and a half seasons, a possible sign that the league’s messaging got through to him.

And yet, in the 2020-21 season, it clearly hasn’t. Between the seven-game suspension in March and possibly another hefty one on the way with the playoffs looming, the NHL has to contain Wilson’s on-ice play before he seriously injures someone.

There’s no questioning that this incident is yet another dirty and unnecessary one from Wilson. There’s no point in defending it or making excuses, or saying that the reaction to it is overblown. It’s clear that Wilson has not learned a lesson from his previous suspensions, despite appearances to the contrary, and the NHL must once again step up to the plate here.

I still think there’s room in the NHL for Wilson’s legal brand of tough offensive hockey — after all, the forward has been a pretty consistent 35 to 40 point scorer since 2017 — but he has to clean up his game if he wants to have a future in this league. We’ll see if the lesson, if the NHL even gives one out, sticks this time around.

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The NHL finally got it right and hit Tom Wilson with another heavy suspension

But will Wilson actually get the message?

Tom Wilson is the dirtiest player in the NHL, but the league — for whatever reason — has beens shy about punishing him for crossing the line with dangerous hits in recent years.

Maybe that’s changing. Or maybe Wilson finally made such an egregious hit that the player safety department had no choice. Wilson was banned for 7 games after his reckless and stupid hit sent Boston Bruins defenseman Brandon Carlo to the hospital. That’s seven games out of a 56-game schedule, so basically a 10-game suspension in a regular year (Wilson is able to appeal, though.)

Wilson hadn’t been suspended in since October 2018 and a lot of people wanted to believe Wilson had changed or learned or evolved.

Then he did this:

If you listen to Capitals fans, they’ll tell you that Wilson has cleaned up his game by not flying into hits with his stick raised high, or by resisting the urge to launch upward toward the head. But he does both of those things here.

Plenty of smart hockey people I respect have made the argument that this was a legal hit — and in fact there was no initial call made on the ice.

But the more I watch this, the more I’m inclined to agree with … uh, Brad Marchand? It’s very uncomfortable to have to agree with Brad Marchand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDCBKoLoGU0

The NHL muddled its explanation of the suspension a bit, acknowledging that it was legal for Wilson to hit Carlo in that situation but finding fault with the fact that Carlo’s head took so much of the impact:

“While there are aspects of this hit that may skirt the line between suspendable and non-suspendable, it is the totality of the circumstances that caused this play to merit supplemental discipline. What separates this hit from others is the direct and significant contact to a defenseless player’s face and head, causing a violent impact with the glass.”

And that’s probably the most important factor here: Hockey players’ heads need to be protected, both from direct hits like this and jarring body blows that might cause concussions or even sub-concussive impacts.

You may have missed it, but one of the key players in the Miracle On Ice team that won gold at the 1980 Olympics, Mark Pavelich, was found dead last week in his room at a treatment center for mental illness. He’d been diagnosed, after a professional hockey career that lasted 10 years with a neurocognitive disorder due to traumatic brain injury.

In defending the hit, Capitals coach Peter Laviolette said, “If this is a suspendable play, then all hitting is probably going to have to be removed,” and “This kind of hit happens so many times during the course of the game.”

But I watch plenty of hockey and would say that, in 2021, this hit could happen so many times during the course of game but it rarely does because the players have taken it upon themselves to change the game. They play hard and yet still have the wherewithal to decide to forgo checks such as this precisely because they know it may end up with an opponent having his head rattled against the glass.

Wilson is one of the few who still regularly takes run like this.

Wilson was suspended four times times over 13 months between 2017 and 2018, including once for 20 games (the good folks at RMNB have a full list here.)

But he still does cheap stuff that like this all too often:

https://twitter.com/NHLSafetyWatch/status/1365099502286352388

This, too, is the sort of hit that could happen so many times during any given NHL game. Only it doesn’t. Because most players, even the toughest ones, have decided they can be effective without resorting to disrespectful hits against vulnerable opponents.

Wilson plays on the top line in an important market alongside one of the best scorers in NHL history, Alexander Ovechkin. He’s a handsome, marketable player (the Capitals recently tweeted a video of him rolling out after a workout that many joked was NSFW). It feels as though those facts have protected him from real scrutiny; it’s much easier to banish fourth-liners, dust off your hands and say you’ve made the game safer.

Maybe Wilson missing this important chunk of the season (and losing more than $310,000 in salary) will finally make him change his game. Because it most certainly is possible for him to do so. The majority of NHL players have already done it.

Dowling Catholic goes where no Iowa team has gone before: winning 7 straight championships

Dowling Catholic football won its unprecedented seventh-straight Iowa state championship.

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CEDAR FALLS, Ia. — At some point, Dowling Catholic football will not be the state champion. The Maroons will not win the final game of the season here at the UNI-Dome. They will not add another golden trophy to the unprecedented collection currently sitting inside a glass case at 1400 Buffalo Road in West Des Moines. They will not lord over Iowa’s largest football class.

Someday that will happen, and when it does, the other 41 teams in Class 4A will breathe easy and sleep easier, knowing that it is, in fact, possible. That Tom Wilson’s mighty Maroons can be defeated. That Goliath can fall.

That’s what history says, at least, but Iowa’s long and storied football history has never seen a football team like Dowling Catholic. The Maroons have carved out a spot all their own now, piling up touchdowns and wins and titles like no team ever before.

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Dowling won the 4A state championship on Friday night. The Maroons are the first Iowa football team ever to win seven straight state titles, and their latest one looked like this: 21 unanswered points from the star running back and senior quarterback and a mean defensive effort to turn a 10-0 second-quarter deficit into a 21-16 win over crosstown rival West Des Moines Valley.

“As a young coach, I dreamed of one,” said Wilson, Dowling’s coach, who now sits second all-time with eight state titles, trailing only Harlan’s Curt Bladt (11). “To think of something like this is unbelievable. These kids are part of history now.”

The Tigers claimed a 10-0 lead, thanks to a couple of interceptions from Drew Jirak and a 79-yard touchdown by junior receiver Matthew Mahoney. But then Dowling rolled up 230 rushing yards, including 141 and two touchdowns from Gavin Williams. The defense forced three turnovers, including two with less than five minutes to play.

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The celebration began when senior Adam Brauch intercepted Valley’s Braeden Katcher with 70 ticks left. It commenced in full after the clock hit all zeroes. Dowling helmets flew and voices roared and tears rolled down their cheeks. They stormed toward their peers and looked at each other as if to make sure it was real.

It was, and it will be forever.

“I think it started when we were in sixth grade,” said Brauch. “It’s just surreal. It hasn’t hit me yet.”

Read the rest of the story at the Des Moines Register.