It did not take long for George Parros to find himself in the thick of NHL suspension controversies.
Parros is serving as the NHL's head of player safety, and recently came under fire as a result of two contentious decisions: a two-game suspension for Anaheim's Andrew Cogliano that ended the Ducks forward's iron man streak at 830 games, and a maximum fine levied on Dustin Brown of the Los Angeles Kings for a dangerous looking cross-check.
Parros addressed the decisions in a report at the NHL's Board of Governors meeting in Tampa on Saturday, beginning with Cogliano's hit on Adrian Kempe, per Dan Rosen of NHL.com:
Anytime we see interference that late with significant head contact, it's been a suspension. This one, the Cogliano interference itself, was among the very latest we've seen. There was significant head contact. We have all sorts of comparables, players suspended for hits that didn't occur as late as Cogliano's with zero head contact.
Parros admitted it was a tough decision to suspend his former Ducks teammate, whose consecutive games streak was the fourth-longest in league history.
The other play in question was this cross-check by Brown on Justin Schultz, which earned the King a $10,000 fine in lieu of a suspension, a decision that was met with much criticism.
Again, Parros defended his call:
The Brown incident and Cogliano incident are two different animals. It's apples to oranges, really. Cogliano's was an interference with significant head contact. Dustin Brown's was a cross-checking incident. It's very natural to want to compare the two and the forces involved in the situations, but they're quite different. With Dustin Brown, we examined all sorts of things ... and at the end of the day the force doesn't really compare at all with any of the cross-checking or boarding suspensions we've had in the past. He was subject to a hearing, got fined the maximum amount allowable by the CBA and compared to other plays like that one, it's a stiffer fine than usual.
Parros accepted the position prior to the start of the preseason, following in the footsteps of former players Stephane Quintal and Brendan Shanahan, his immediate predecessors.
Copyright © 2018 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.