In the first period of Saturday night's game against the Pittsburgh Penguins, Los Angeles Kings forward Ethan Moreau made this reckless hit on Chris Kunitz:
Moreau was given two minutes for boarding on Saturday. On Sunday, the NHL's Department of Players Safety fined him $2,500 for it ? the maximum allowed under the Collective Bargaining Agreement, going to the Players' Emergency Assistance Fund.
Based on what we could find, this appears to be Moreau's first run-in with NHL supplemental discipline; please recall that the Penguins' Kris Letang was suspended last month for boarding Alex Burmistrov of the Winnipeg Jets because he was considered a repeat offender, even if the hit itself was a commonplace boarding minor and not (in our estimation) suspension-worthy.
This is the third fine to come from Chief Shanahan's department, as Mats Zuccarello of the New York Rangers and Shea Weber of the Nashville Predators were also fined $2,500 for boarding. Both were first-time offenders.
Weber's hit was similar to Moreau's in the sense that neither guy took a charge at their victims ? velocity being paramount when deciding to swing the Shanahammer on a hit from behind.
Rather, both hits were just stiff shots to the numbers on a player in a vulnerable position. Given the Weber hit/fine as a precedent, there was no reason to expect the NHL D.o.P.S. to go any further on Moreau.
Question is: Should it have gone further, on Moreau and Weber? If the goal is awareness and deterrence, does $2,500 speak as loudly as one-game suspensions?
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