NHL commissioner Gary Bettman affirmed Morgan Rielly’s five-game suspension Tuesday afternoon for his cross-check to the head of Ottawa’s Ridly Greig.
In an 11-page ruling, which followed a one hour and 45-minute hearing last week with members of Toronto’s management and representatives from the NHLPA, Bettman ultimately agreed with the NHL Department of Player Safety’s initial decision.
“Based on my review of the video,” Bettman wrote, “I find that Mr. Rielly’s actions were not merely careless or reckless, they were intentional.”
The NHL commissioner suggested that Rielly’s suspension may have been even longer had it not been for his previously clean record.
According to Bettman, Rielly argued that while his cross-check on Greig was intentional, he did not “aim” for the head. That didn’t matter, in Bettman’s estimation, because “the fact remains that Mr. Rielly raised his stick to the level of Mr. Greig’s head and neck and drove it forcefully and intentionally into Mr. Greig as Mr. Rielly skated into Mr. Greig.”
Nor did the commissioner buy Rielly’s contention that he mitigated the force of the cross-check by taking one hand off his stick.
He also dismissed as “utterly irrelevant” the contention from Rielly, as well as Leafs GM Brad Treliving and team president Brendan Shanahan, that Greig’s slapshot into an empty net was “provocative.”
“Mr. Rielly’s actions were not undertaken in self-defense,” Bettman wrote. “They were not accidental and they were not reflexive.”
Rielly, Bettman wrote, had time to consider his actions and could have engaged him differently, “e.g., with a push or a shove or even by dropping his gloves to fight. Had he done so, there likely would have been no need for supplementary discipline.”
Arguing that Rielly deserved fewer games, the NHLPA cited four comparable suspensions that drew less: Alex Chiasson (one game); Jeff Skinner (three); Blake Lizotte (one); and Evander Kane (one playoff game).
Bettman disagreed. The level of “force” and “predatory behavior” warranted five games.
The commissioner also didn’t buy that David Perron’s six-game suspension wasn’t comparable for Rielly and even cited the Jason Spezza suspension he reduced (to four games from six) — “conduct of a lesser nature by another Player who engaged in reckless (but not intentional) conduct” — as reason that the “suspension here could well have been higher.”
Rielly argued that Greig’s actions were “disrespectful” to the Leafs but also disavowed, according to Bettman, “suggestions that have been made publicly by others that his actions were somehow appropriate.”
“It is my hope and expectation,” Bettman wrote, “that the events leading to this suspension were an aberration that will not be repeated.”
The Leafs have gone 4-0-0 without Rielly.
The 29-year-old will serve the final game of his suspension in Arizona on Wednesday night. He’ll be eligible to return when the Leafs visit Vegas on Thursday.
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