Quote:
Originally Posted by Cali Panthers Fan
This is also not about the league's reputation for the most part. It is about taking a moral stance on an important issue and letting these players know that this sort of thing simply isn't acceptable. That's coming from a league that deals in regular violence legally allowed in their sport, but the key difference being that those are willing participants. Also, the league has an opportunity to regularly engage with the public, and so they have a responsibility to discipline their players appropriately in an attempt to show the public just how wrong something like this is.
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I'm not sure I agree that I want a hockey league attempting to dictate morality to the public or tell the public how "wrong" certain things are. That doesn't seem to me to be its role or something it's particularly well suited to doing. I do think I disagree with Dobbles's position that they shouldn't be punishing for things that are dealt with through law enforcement, though. Of course this is about the league's reputation - they've seen how badly the NFL has come off in this area and have made a conscious decision that they're not going to follow suit. They did it with Voynov and they've done it here. Whether you think the outcome is right or wrong, or whether 27 games is too many or too few, a lot of the motivation for this has to do with protecting the brand.