Montreal Canadiens: Player Safety Finally Suspends Someone For Trying to Take Habs Player’s Head Off

The Montreal Canadiens, it seems, always come out on the wrong end of Department of Player Safety decisions.

I suppose this is a somewhat biased recollection, but it just seems like every time Habs fans are asking for a player to be suspended, it never happens.

And don’t even get us Habs fans started on the Brendan Gallagher Goaltender Interference rule that is clearly different than the regular goaltender interference rule that applies to every other player in the entire league.

But suspensions seemed to be narrowly avoided by several players recently when their victim was on the Montreal Canadiens roster. Again, this is probably a “confirmation bias” thing where you have a favorite team and feel things aren’t fair for them and then everything seems worse than it really is to those who aren’t as invested in the Canadiens.

However, take a look at a couple of suspensions, and mostly non-suspensions from recent years.

First, Paul Byron got three games for charging a much bigger Mac Weegar in 2019. Byron did launch upwards as he made contact and did make contact with Weegar’s head, which is what resulted in the suspension.

That’s probably fair. The game wants unnecessary head contact out of the sport, so they punish people for crossing that line? Makes sense.

What about Tyler Myers on Joel Armia early last season?

Myers comes from the blind side and makes significant contact with Armia’s head. The hit was deemed illegal on the ice and called a match penalty, which is the most severe punishment an on-ice official can dole out in a game. Off-ice officials thought the hit was fine and did not deserve a suspension at all.

A similar hit from last season saw Ottawa Senators defence man Erik Gudbranson hit Canadiens forward Jake Evans in the head with great force. The much larger Gudbranson approached the hit from a crouched position but rose quickly just before contact. His skates stayed on the ice, but the impact was directly on Evans nose, which is the head contact the league says it wants out of the game. Gudbranson could have made the initial impact to the chest or shoulder area but clearly targeted the head at the last second.

The result? No call on the ice and no call from the off ice officials either.

Another example from last season was a blatant head shot behind the net by Dillon Dube on Jesperi Kotkaniemi. The Habs centre turned behind his own net and was hammered with a high hit from the Calgary Flames winger.

Once again. No suspension was deemed necessary.

Those three non suspensions against the Canadiens all happened within about a two week window in late January and early February last season. Habs fans were left to scratch their heads when Joakim Blichfeld was suspended two games for his hit to the head of Nathan MacKinnon.

To call the decisions inconsistent would be under selling the lack of accountability to those players who were running the Canadiens.

Finally, this season, a player has been suspended for his hit to the head of a Canadiens player. Sam Bennett took a healthy run at Cedric Paquette as the Habs centre played the puck in front of his own net. Bennett made direct and hard contact with Paquette’s head and injured the Canadiens player.

Sam Bennett had a hearing and was shockingly suspended for three games for the viscous hit. Fans of the Canadiens had long since believed the Department of Player Safety didn’t care about their team’s safety. But they did their job this time.

Bennett was not penalized for the play. He finished the game with two goals and ten shots on net as the Florida Panthers beat the severely shorthanded Habs 5-2.