from David Pollak of Working the Corners at the Mercury News,

So when Marc-Edouard Vlasic questioned the consistency of the NHL’s punishment in his case last April and the ruling this week suspending Toronto forward Phil Kessel for three pre-season games (see previous posting), I tried to reach NHL director of player safety Brendan Shanahan for a response.

I expected a pro forma “we don’t engage in post-decision discussions” from the league. Instead I got an email back from Shanahan. That led to a late-night phone call and after some off-the-record conversation, he decided to respond on the record. Here’s what he had to say:

“My door is always open to any player. If he truly wants an explanation, he can reach out to me anytime and I will give him an explanation. That is an easy route and not something that he necessarily needs to do through the newspaper.

“On each incident, we dissect the details. We use our experience to try to establish intent, degree of recklessness. For someone to say the judgment is too lenient of the judgment is too harsh, that’s perfectly acceptable because this is a subjective job and we respect that other people have other opinions.”

read on and if you don't remember the slash from Vlasic on Heatley from early April, watch it below. Vlasic was fined $8,378.38 for the slash.