The video link is broken.

Just right. I don’t think there was any ill-intent beyond the role that Kostopolous is asked to play. As a checking line player, it is his duty to finish his checks and play on that edge. It was extremely unfortunate that Van Ryn checked up the way that he did. That being said, Kostopolous should have recognized Van Ryn’s vulnerable position. Van Ryn should never have put himself in such a precarious position.

if Kostopolous checks up and does a fly by behind the net, and Van Ryn skates into his corner and up the ice with the puck, do you think Kostopolous is congratulated for his sportsmanship on the ice, or given hell for giving up an odd-man rush?

The position of the league to penalize based on injury rather than intent is very misguided. We’ve seen this on the other end as well where vicious hit are unpenalized because nobody missed a shift.

The above clip inidactes no intent to injue and shouldn’t earn anything more than a two minute boarding penalty.

Look, I’m willing to give Kostopolous the benefit of the doubt that he had no intent to injure, that’s a grievous and serious charge and there isn’t sufficient evidence to point that to.

With that aside though, Kostopolous demonstrated that he had full and clear intentions to hit Van Ryn into the boards from behind, my belief is that he underestimated his speed and the impact of his hit.

Having watched the replays a gazillion times, several facts are quite evident.

1) Kostopolous had Van Ryn lined up for a full 3 seconds going into the boards, 3 bloody seconds is ample time to react. Did Van Ryn turn into the hit last minute? He shifted ever so slightly, not significant enough that he would have avoided the hit had he not make that slight turn.

2) Kostopolous went straight into Van Ryn body-first, no player will skate full speed and go barreling into the boards, they’ll always at least try to turn or go into the boards with their shoulder, this wasn’t the case which means Kostopolous clearly intended Van Ryn to be between him and the boards when they made contact.

3) Kostopolous had his arms and elbow up.

4) Kostopolous leaned into the hit, meaning he put his weight into it. If he had simply ran into Van Ryn, he would’ve gone into the hit straight.

Therefore, intention to hit from behind into the boards, clear and obvious. 3 games is a hand-slap, and obviously Kostopolous doesn’t think it’s his fault, he’s sticking to his blatant lie that Van Ryn turned into him, so it’s not his fault, it’s Van Ryn’s and the sentence justifies his thinking. No lesson has been learned and the only message being sent by Campbell and the front office is that they’re not interested in eliminating hits from behind.

A guy without any history of dirty hits makes one with all the media in Canada in the house, on HNIC. The fact that he got more than Randy Jones last year for nearly ending Patrice Bergeron’s career is pretty funny.

Kostopolous is completely at fault for this, but the random wheel of justice is definitely in place. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. To be honest, I don’t know if 3 games is too much or too little or what have you. Campbell and Co. have no logic, no method, just madness.

Dear God, Winkle. You want him hung, don’t you?

People are forgetting that this is essentially a 4 game suspension… he got a game misconduct in the first period of that game. And it’s really a suspension without precedent. If you think this one is too little, than every other hit from behind in NHL history has been punished too little, so it’s a moot point on this particular instance.

1) There has to be a way to make suspensions non-arbitrary. By that we mean the punishments through the years have NEVER been consistent. Now suddenly the NHL policy is that a suspension will be given if injury results? What is VanRyn got up from that hit and started throwing his fists, no suspension for Kostopolous?
2) If this is the policy, then so be it, but lets show some consistency then. Will the degree of injury also play a role in suspension length? Again, fine if that’s the policy, but lets know it in advance and then lets see it enforced evenly throughout the season AND playoffs!

And is a token response whenever incidents like this are brought up, but it’s going to take someone dying for changes to be made.

You think anything changed after the Steve Moore incident? That was a perfect chance, years ago, to change the system after the publicity the incident got. But the NHL refused to do something about it.