[RedWing9]

The league should suspend him. They penalize players all the time for calls not made on the ice. Cheating is not something that should be tolerated - that’s the leftist way.

[DaveyB]

The league should suspend him.

Suspend him for what amounts to too many men on the ice - get real. Its a two minute bench penalty and a five or ten minute misconduct. The play was not that threatening and what it really did is get inside the head of the Kings players. This is playoff hockey - face washes, late bumps, marginal cross checks after the whistle, light slashing above the shin pad - its all mind games and it is all "cheating" or as hockey fans call it the playoffs.

[EQAndyBuzz]

” Cheating is not something that should be tolerated - that’s the leftist way.”

Yeah, but it was two California teams. The LA Times already blamed Bush for it.

[Alberta's Child]

I agree that something should be done, for the sake of justice and to serve as a deterrent for this kind of nonsense in the future. However, the NHL may not have a mechanism in place to do this. Suspensions involving plays on the ice (including those that do not involve a penalty at the time) are aimed almost exclusively at attempts to injure, so I'm not sure what kind of urgency the NHL would have in dealing with this.

There's a possibility that the NHL could institute (immediately) a new rule or clarification of an existing rule that would potentially allow for suspensions after the fact. There's also a possibility that NHL on-ice officials might just "overlook" a serious act of retribution against Ryan Clowe in the Sharks' next game.

The biggest issue right now is that the NHL has to eliminate any incentive a team might have to try this kind of crap in the future.