A study of NHL officiating and disciplinary action has found that the Philadelphia Flyers are the team in the league with the most suspensions over the last two seasons.
On Friday night, Philadelphia Flyers captain Claude Giroux raised some eyebrows with this hard hit that sent the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Kris Letang flying onto the ice.
Viewers were torn on how intentional the hit was — Giroux was clearly propelled into motion by Sidney Crosby. But the slow-motion video is fairly incriminating, showing Giroux clearly aware that the collision is coming and shown extending his elbow:
Letang headed to the locker room after the hit, but Giroux wasn’t penalized.
If you’ve ever wondered which NHL teams rack up more than their fair share of penalties and suspensions, OnlineGambling.ca recently conducted an analysis of NHL fines and suspensions over the last two years using data from scoutingtherefs.com.
“They may hail from the City of Brotherly Love, but the Philadelphia Flyers sure seem to bring the hate once they put on their skates,” the study concluded. “The team racked up the most suspensions of any team during the period studied, thanks, in part, to the actions of Radko Gudas. The dastardly defenseman racked up a six-game suspension in a 2016 preseason game and sat out three games for a check to the head the previous December.”
The NHL Department of Player Safety has made an effort to crack down on infractions such as slashing and boarding, but fans have been frustrated that their rulings have appeared inconsistent at best and random at worst.
The seven Flyers players who have been suspended since the beginning of the 2015-16 season are Radko Gudas (two games for an illegal check to the head of Ottawa’s Mika Zibanejad), Gudas (two games for an illegal check to the head of Zibanejad), Chris VandeVelde (two games for an illegal check to the head of Chicago’s Jonathan Toews), Pierre-Edouard Bellemare (one game for a hit from behind to Washington’s Dmitry Orlov), Brayden Schenn (three games for charging on Washington’s T.J. Oshie), Gudas again (that six-game ban for a hit on Boston’s Austin Czarnik), Dale Weise (three games for a hit on Anaheim’s Korbinian Holzer), Brandon Manning (two games for interference on Pittsbugh’s Jake Guenztel) and, finally, Gudas again — for a whopping 10 games for slashing on Winnipeg’s Mathieu Perreault.
Broad Street Bullies, indeed.
It’s pretty obvious looking at that list that a lot of the Flyers’ issues stem from Gudas — and the pairing of him and Manning isn’t productive enough to make up for all the headaches they cause.
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If the Flyers want to have a hope of staying neck and neck with the Penguins in this first-round series — and it’s certainly a series where there’s no love lost — they’re going to need to make sure that they don’t lose players to suspensions.