Citations are issued by the National Hockey League Hockey Operations Department, which tracks all games, logs all penalties for diving or embellishment and flags all plays not called on the ice that in its opinion were deserving of such a penalty. A Citation is issued once Hockey Operations, through its internal deliberations, is convinced that a player warrants sanction.

Subban was fined $2,000 under Rule 64 earlier this season for incurring two Citations, stemming from incidents on Jan. 6 vs. Tampa Bay and Jan. 29 at New York Rangers. His third Citation, which triggered the $3,000 fine, was issued for an incident during NHL Game No. 1005 vs. Ottawa on March 12, at 0:53 of the second period.