Eugene Melnyk, the Senators' vocal owner, slammed Sidney Crosby for his slash Thursday night in Ottawa that tore off the tip of defenseman Marc Methot's finger, calling for the NHL to indefinitely suspend the Penguins' captain.
And Melnyk hardly stopped there.
“Sometimes they miss these things," he said of the referees in an interview with the Ottawa Citizen. "I hope this guy ... and we all know who he is, the guy is a just a whiner beyond belief. You do this kind of stuff and I don’t care who you are in the league, I don’t care if you’re the No. 1 player in the league, you should sit out a long time for this kind of crap. I really do.”
Melnyk told the Citizen he'd charged his general manager, Pierre Dorion, with contacting the NHL on the matter. The NHL's Department of Player Safety told Canada's TSN that it saw nothing warranting further discipline, either from this incident or from Crosby spearing the Sabres' Ryan O'Reilly in the privates two nights earlier in Buffalo, another source of controversy.
Melnyk's stance long has been that a player should be suspended for as long as the victim is injury. He reiterated that regarding Crosby.
“That’s the only way to do it: You hammer these guys, take away their money because they all understand money, and you simply say you’re done for 10 games and --- guess what? -- you guys aren’t even going to get close to the Stanley Cup if it’s an elite player on the other side," he said. "There’s no room for it in the NHL.”
Crosby said after the game the stick contact was something that happens frequently in a game, and the Senators, including their captain Erik Karlsson, supported that.
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