When the NHL Department of Player Safety announced Thursday afternoon that it had decided to suspend Buffalo Sabres blueliner Rasmus Ristolainen three games for his hit on Pittsburgh’s Jake Guentzel, I was okay with the call.
You can argue that two games is more appropriate, but let’s not argue over something that minor: three games is only one more than two, the last time I checked, so that extra game does not make this suspension draconian. Clearly, the hit deserved more than one game, and since I envisioned a scenario in which the NHL DPOS went as high as five games, I’m not going to complain about three.