Just as Connor McDavid is set to return from his three-game suspension to the Edmonton Oilers line-up against Seattle Monday night, hockey’s most venerated commentator Don Cherry has weighed in to condemn the various unpenalized holds and grips Vancouver’s Conor Garland used on McDavid, provoking McDavid to lash pack.
“It was ridiculous,” said Cherry on his Gravepine podcast. “I mean, he (Garland) really did really have him tied up.”
But Cherry felt the NHL’s George Parros in Player Safety had to give both McCavid and Tyler Myers equal suspensions for their respective crosschecks to the head.
“Well, you had to give him three games if the other guy (Myers) gets three games.”
Cherry also said the two-minute instigator penalty in NHL fights for a player who stands up for his star teammate is ridiculous. The stars were better protected in the past, he said. “Everybody used to take care, take care of (Guy Lafleur), take care of (Steve) Shutt…. Say you pick on Shutt. There’s a guy coming. Took care of their own. And then somebody made this rule that now you have two, five and a ten. The instigator rule.”
Cherry said when he himself coached in the1970s he didn’t want his star players fighting, such as top defender Brad Park, who had led the New York Rangers in fights, but quit fighting in Boston after Cherry had a word with him.
Cherry told him not to fight, with Park then asking what he should do if someone speared him.
“I says, ‘Don’t worry, there’ll be somebody there to take care of.’ And after that, he never had a fight.”
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