Canucks Get Shelled, Fan Gets Shoved

It always seems the games I care the least about, something exciting happens. I planned to write about the Caps/Thrashers game a couple weeks back, and that's when Pavelec had his fainting spell. Tonight, the story quickly switched from 'Canucks get their asses handed to them in a tea cup' and 'Luongo played like crap' to..this...

It was getting ugly at this point in the game, for the Canucks that is, down 6-1 and tempers were flaring at the benches. Rick Rypien ends up getting the game misconduct in all of this and gets escorted to the dressing room, and here's where Twitter exploded...

As we clearly saw, Rypien went after the guy, wrong time to applaud I guess? totally not cool. How will Colin Campbell spin this one on his wheel of justice? No doubt worthy of a suspension.

Time for the NHL PR machine to go into overdrive. Does the League come down heavy on Rypien, most likely. If it's 8-10 games I think that would be fair. Despite the fact Rypien CLEARLY broke the rules, this is all the Official ones say (Via Bryan Reynolds)

40.1 Physical abuse of officials... auto gamer, and auto suspension = not less than 20 games.

The Rypien shove reminded me of the fan who got into a scuffle with Tie Domi in the penalty box a few years back.


More on this story as the info becomes available, stay tuned.

UPDATE:

Rule 23.7 states that "Any player, goalkeeper or non-playing Club personnel who physically interferes with the spectators, becomes involved in an altercation with a spectator, or throws any object at a spectator, shall automatically incur a game misconduct penalty and the Referee shall report all such infractions to the Commissioner who shall have full power to impose such further penalty as he shall deem appropriate."  Thanks Vancouver Sun and to Bryan Reynolds from Hockey Wilderness

- Jaye