Cody McLeod was suspended for five games on Monday. He applied a devastating hit on the Red Wings' Niklas Kronwall, who had to be escorted off on a stretcher. This is the first suspension in his career for McLeod and he'll forfeit $29,487.20 in pay.
The Department of Player Safety confirmed that they "were convinced McLeod had time to avoid or minimize checking Kronwall from behind."
I'm not going to go into details of the hit and what McLeod should've done because that's Shanahan's job. Find the explanation on YouTube under the NHL user. But this was expected and like Maxim Lapierre, it was deserved.
McLeod had plenty of time to see what he was doing and yet he went ahead and did the check. This was justice served and I hope McLeod learns a hard lesson for this. If not, you might want to ask Maxim Lapierre. Look where his hit on Dan Boyle put him.
Now on to Grabner. This is a lesser hit and therefore Shanahan suspended him for two games and lost over $30,769.24 in pay for his hit on the Hurricanes' Nathan Gerbe. Gerbe remained in the game after Grabner's shoulder hit him on the head Saturday. This is Grabner's first-time offense. Obviously, here, the head is the main point of contact, so you have to sit him for a few games. I think two games here was good enough. This was a head hit, but it did not suffer enough injury to get Gerbe off the time. So I agree with the suspension.
These are the maximum games I expected, although I might've given McLeod one more game to make him six games and not five. Looks like the Avalanche and the Islanders will have some catching up to do now that these players are off the ice for some time.
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