George Parros, the head of the NHL’s Department of Player Safety, finds himself under intense scrutiny after the latest incident involving Capitals forward Tom Wilson.
On Monday night, Wilson drove Rangers forward Pavel Buchnevich’s head down towards the ice after the whistle and then punched him in the head while he was down. During the scrum that followed, Wilson also body-slammed a helmetless Artemi Panarin and punched him while he was down as well.
Panarin suffered some sort of lower-body injury as a result and will miss the Rangers’ final three games of the season, and things obviously could have been much worse had his head hit the ice during the throwdown.
Parros and the Department of Player Safety elected not to suspend Wilson, who was already suspended seven games earlier this season for drilling Bruins defenseman Brandon Carlo in the head. Wilson received a $5,000 slap-on-the-wrist fine for "roughing" Buchnevich and nothing for the Panarin portion.
The Rangers organization responded to the decision with one of the most critical statements we’ve seen from a team in a long time, calling it “a dereliction of duty” by Parros and saying they “believe he is unfit to continue in his current role.”
If a report from The Athletic is true, Bruins fans might be in agreement. According to Rangers reporter Rick Carpiniello, Parros didn’t even want to suspend Wilson for his March 5 hit on Carlo, a hit that landed Carlo in the hospital overnight and resulted in issues with blurry vision and memory loss. Carlo missed nearly a month with a concussion.
Carpiniello adds that Wilson only got suspended for that because NHL commissioner Gary Bettman didn’t like the optics of not suspending Wilson and stepped in to overrule Parros.
It remains to be seen if anything happens as it relates to Parros, but it has to be concerning that the head of Player Safety -- I repeat, PLAYER SAFETY -- doesn’t seem to want to hold accountable a dirty player who consistently threatens other players’ safety.