Capitals Tom Wilson wants to move on from incident with Rangers; called Panarin afterwards
Anthony Scultore
|
Tom Wilson wants to move on from the ugly incident that occurred with the New York Rangers. “After the play, I would have never thought that all this would have blown up,” he said in his first press conference since slamming Artemi Panarin to the ice. “Nothing I say right now is going to change anybody’s opinion, they’ve already made that up and I’ve just got to keep moving forward.”
Tom Wilson wants to move on from Rangers incident
“It seemed a fairly routine hockey scrum to me, and I think that was kind of the feeling from both players in the box and then obviously it took on a new life after the game,” he explained. “Those scrums are chaotic and there’s lots of stuff going on, but I didn’t think too much of it at the time.”
That scrum that Wilson is calling routine certainly does happen every game. But it usually doesn’t up with body slamming a player and causing him to miss the rest of the season. After Wilson sucker punched Pavel Buchnevich, the smaller Panarin grabbed Wilson from behind. To do so, he had to hop on his back and could still barely wrap his arms around him. The infuriated bull in a china shop proceeded to grab hold of Panarin who feebly tried to put up a fight and proceeded to body slam him to the ice.
The aftermath was this, Panarin out for the year and Wilson fined $5000 – for the punch. The Rangers on the other hand were fined $250,000 for calling out the NHL Department of Player Safety. By that math, Wilson could punch and body slam a player 49 more times (although the NHLPA via the CBA doesn’t allow fines of more than $5000).
Tom Wilson calls Artemi Panarin to check on him
Late yesterday we learned that Tom Wilson and Alexander Ovechkin called Artemi to see how he was feeling. Yes, I kid you not. “I’m glad Panarin is doing well,” Wilson said. “He’s better. I reached out to him, and that’s really what matters right now.”
News of this phone call came out late yesterday on TSN Insider Trading. “Tom Wilson and Alex Ovechkin reached out to Artemi Panarin just to see if he’s ok,” Darren Dreger revealed. “This isn’t unusual despite what some think about Tom Wilson. He did want to make sure Panarin was ok because it did not go the way that Wilson was hoping.”
Just how did Wilson want that to go? I’m pretty baffled by that statement. Dreger adding that “the villain of the week does in fact have a heart” is equally mind boggling.
Bottom line is now it’s done. The question is, will anything change? Or are we just waiting for Wilson’s next offense.
NHL Hits Rangers Hard!
The Rangers learned the price for speaking out against the NHL. Read the details here.