Jets forward Brendan Lemieux was given a match penalty on Friday for his high hit on Panthers forward Vincent Trocheck. If you missed it here is a replay of the hit which put Winnipeg down a man for five-minutes (technically three minutes as Florida also was assessed a penalty) as well as short a player for the rest of the game.
The Panthers scored with three seconds left in Lemieux’s major to go up 3-2 and eventually won the game 4-2. Lemieux had earlier taken a high-sticking penalty which resulted in the game tying goal early in the 2nd period and Jets coach Paul Maurice was clearly not pleased after the game saying in response to a question about the penalties Lemieux took in the game “the penalties Brendan took Brendan deserved”.
Today the Department of Player Safety handed down a two game suspension for the hit. Here is the explanation.
While Lemieux was heavily penalized (170 PIM) in the AHL last season (second most in the league) and did receive numerous game misconducts he has not been suspended in his two seasons in the AHL (117 games).
Now that we know the length of Lemieux’s suspension the next question is whether the Jets make a recall from the Manitoba Moose? The Moose will be in Winnipeg until Sunday when they travel to Texas to start a three-game road trip. The likely candidate for recall is Kristian Vesalainen who is just getting over an upper-body injury that has seen him miss the last few games with Manitoba although coach Vincent did tell us after the game on Friday that the Finnish forward is “day-to-day” and that he was confident he’d be ready to play this week.
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