Conor McDavid should have been suspended for this garbage, but of course the NHL didn’t

The NHL only threw a fine at Connor McDavid for this attempted decapitation of Montreal’s Jesperi Kotkaniemi on Tuesday night:

It’s the NHL’s famous “Wheel of Justice’’ rearing its ugly head again. There is no hockey play about this, and it’s a direct attempt to injure.

It’s the kind of thing the league has needed to dustbin from the game for years and years, and yet always shrinks from the responsibility. It shouldn’t matter that this is McDavid.

You want to send a message to everyone? You want to make it clear that it’s a different game? Then you sit the best player in the league down for 10 games for this. That’s what it’s worth.

But this is the NHL, and they always have an excuse. When it’s someone like McDavid, he’s too big of a star to suspend. When it’s a swamp beast like Tom Wilson, they’re afraid of what the old guard will bellow. Anyone in between, they don’t think anyone will notice.

And nothing changes.