from Ken Campbell of The Hockey News,

Brad Marchand's vicious elbow to the head of Marcus Johansson was bad enough, but the NHL's feeble five-game suspension for such a flagrant transgression by a six-time offender is even worse.

The same league that has proved time and again that it has no interest in protecting its star players from the actions of thugs and miscreants is more than happy to protect stars who are thugs and miscreants themselves. That’s really the only conclusion that can be drawn from the NHL’s ridiculously feeble five-game suspension to Brad Marchand of the Boston Bruins for his flying elbow to the head of Marcus Johansson of the New Jersey Devils.

It’s bad enough that Marchand only received five games for an action that was so egregious, so blatant and so gratuitously vicious and dirty. But what makes it worse is that George Parros and his band at the NHL’s department of player safety watched Marchand’s indiscretion hundreds of times in slow motion from every angle and never had any intention of giving him more than five games.

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