Five Games Correct for Ryan Garbutt?

Ryan Garbutt may have scored his first goal of the season on Sunday, but his actions later in the game got him into trouble with the league and his punishment for him came down on Wednesday.

The Dallas Stars forward has been suspended by the NHL for five games for charging Anaheim Ducks winger Dustin Penner. He will forfeit $14,743.60 in pay as a result of his actions.

The hit occurred as Garbutt was leaving the penalty box and rushing back into the defensive zone when Penner had the puck along the boards and then crashed his head into Penner's head when Penner was moving in on Stars rookie goaltender John Campbell. Penner was knocked unconscious briefly and stay behind from the Ducks' trip because of concussion testing.

Penner brought attention to Garbutt's hit by posting a link of the hit on YouTube to his Twitter feed, questioning why there was no call on the hit.

This ruling ended a busy eight days for Brendan Shanahan, who had five hearings, four of them in person.

For Ryan Garbutt, I expected six to seven games because of a head hit, but like I said in my recent post questioning the number of games Garbutt would actually get, I implied that Shanahan was most likely to give five games because in-person hearings recently also gave five games to players like Maxim Lapierre and Cody McLeod. And because their suspensions, as well as Garbutt's, didn't exceed five games, they can't appeal to a neutral arbitrator. So that means Garbutt will have to sit out and the Stars will have to move on without him. They'll need him because he's an aggressive player but you can't be taking out peoples' heads just so you can prevent them from getting a chance on goal. I saw the hit in person and it looked terrifying to see Dustin Penner almost not moving for a second. Again, justice was served. I expected at least one more game of suspension but since five games are the norm these days, I will not go against it.