Make It Up As You Go

You may have heard, one day after the NHL issued a very light settlement with the players of the class-action lawsuit regarding head injuries, that the independent arbitrator looking into Tom Wilson's 20-game suspension following his check to the head of St. Louis' Oskar Sundqvist had reduced Wilson's suspension to 14 games, making him eligible to return to play today as well as restoring nearly $400,000 in salary to Wilson. That man, pictured to the left, is Shyam Das. He's the same man who reduced the suspension to Austin Watson following his domestic abuse allegation, and he was the same man fired by Major League Baseball shortly after overturning Ryan Braun's suspension after he was found to have used performance-enhancing drugs. It might be time for the NHL to look for another arbitrator after today's decision to reduce the 20 games to 14 games seems as arbitrary as pulling numbers from a lottery machine.

I have no words for the decision he came down with today, so I'll let Stephen Whyno tell you about how he came to the suspension-reducing decision.

Das writes: "the length of the 20-game suspension imposed was not supported by substantial evidence" and came to 14 for Wilson by treating 3-game playoff suspension as a 6-gamer, doubling it and adding 2 for Sundqvist injury.

— Stephen Whyno (@SWhyno) November 13, 2018

I beg to differ on Das' opinion that the 20-game suspension "was not supported by substantial evidence". Pittsburgh's Zach Aston-Reese couldn't eat solid food all summer thanks to a broken jaw in last season's playoffs, Robert Thomas of the St. Louis Blues was the target of a late hit in the preseason, and Sammy Blais of the St. Louis Blues was driven into the boards by Wilson. All three instances drew suspensions, so the "substantial evidence" is clearly there. Or perhaps Das doesn't understand how suspensions work in the NHL.

I'm going with the latter.

In any case, Das then decided to impose his own mathematical equation in determining an appropriate suspension period with absolutely zero logic or reasoning behind the equation. As Whyno wrote in his tweet, Das "came to 14 for Wilson by treating 3-game playoff suspension as a 6-gamer, doubling it and adding 2 for Sundqvist injury." So, according to Das, the Aston-Reese hit counts as evidence, but the Thomas and Blais hits do not? Getting the double-credit for the playoff games is a good start, but why do the two games for Thomas not count and the four games for Blais not count? If you do the math, that's how the NHL came up with 20 games, so what evidence does Das provide that would negate the six games against the two Blues players?

None. Not one shred of evidence other than his personal feelings, apparently.

As per The Associated Press, Das was dismissed shortly following his overturning of Ryan Braun's 50-game suspension for using performance-enhancing drugs due to a technicality. They write,

Das decided in February to overturn the 50-game suspension of Braun for a positive drug test. Lawyers for the Milwaukee outfielder, the reigning NL MVP, argued that the collection procedures specified in baseball's drug agreement for the urine sample were not followed with Braun's sample last Oct. 1 because it was not immediately left at a Federal Express office.

The collector testified that because the sample was taken on a Saturday and could not have been shipped that day to the testing laboratory outside Montreal, he concluded the sample would be more secure at his home. He then took it to a FedEx office on the following Monday.

Baseball's drug agreement states that "absent unusual circumstances, the specimens should be sent by FedEx to the laboratory on the same day they are collected."

Management loudly and publicly disagreed with his decision.

Baseball decided that Das' ruling on Braun's suspension was outside the realm of integrity of the game regarding the use of performance-enhancing drugs and MLB's testing for them, and they relieved him of his duties within baseball in May 2012. While the lawyers for Braun may have been correct and Das was within his right as an arbitrator to reduce the suspension, Das seems to live in an alternate reality where his decisions can be attained through whatever means he deems important, and his decisions often undercut the integrity of the game and the league for whom he is working.

Reducing Wilson's suspension is garbage. He deserved the 20-game break for his repeated offences and his blatant disregard for both the rules of the game and safety of his colleagues in the NHLPA. While Capitals fans will be happy to get their high-priced power forward back, the NHL should be looking for a new arbitrator today after Das' ruling. His decision makes zero sense, he provides no evidence for reducing the suspension, and he completely disregards the suspensions assigned to Wilson for his garbage play in the preseason.

That's not how this process is supposed to work, and Das' track record of questionable decisions are bubbling to the surface. I guess if you don't have any hard evidence to prove that the suspension was overly harsh, you just make it up as you go along. At this point, I could be an arbitrator if all it takes is random math equations and ignoring previous incidents.

What a bunch of crap.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!