After reviewing the details involving a match penalty that Drew Shore of Copenhagen received in a Feb. 2 game, Sepp Blatter decided not to suspend the Trident forward.
“Shore recklessly swung his stick with two hands, holding it like a baseball bat,” explained the league’s director of player discipline. “Normally, we would suspend players for such actions to provide a deterrent for subsequent actions. But in this case, there are three or four considerations that convince me not to suspend Shore.”
- No one was injured.
- Shore was ejected from the game and his team had to kill off a 5-minute penalty.
- Shore and Copenhagen were playing Helsinki, meaning Brad Marchand, Steve Downie and Derek Roy were in the building at the time.
- Copenhagen GM Dylan Callow was very generous in his explanation of the incident.
Blatter went on to explain that the Helsinki player at whom Shore swung his stick was not one of the aforementioned Jokerit forwards. “Therefore I cannot, in good conscience, financially reward Shore. Had he struck Marchand, Downie or Roy, I might have concluded differently.”
