Dean Lombardi knew full well that he was going to be paying up for his tirade against NHL Vice-President of Hockey Operations Mike Murphy. Even issuing an apology wouldn’t be good enough to get him off the hook and in spite of his apology, the NHL has hit him where it counts for his comments.
NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman announced this afternoon that they are fining Lombardi $50,000 for his comments and Bettman pulled no punches in his comments about Lombardi’s tirade.“There is no acceptable explanation or excuse for commentary challenging the integrity of the League’s Hockey Operations Department in general or Mike Murphy, in particular,” Commissioner Gary Bettman said.
“People can disagree with a call by an official on the ice or an official in the Situation Room in Toronto, but even in instances of the utmost frustration there is no justification for speaking as inappropriately and irresponsibly as Mr. Lombardi did,” Commissioner Bettman added. “Mike Murphy is a devoted caretaker of the game. His commitment to the National Hockey League, all 30 of its Clubs – and to the game – is beyond challenge, question or debate.
“I have spoken to Dean, who has apologized to Mike Murphy and to me and has acknowledged that his comments were wrong, inappropriate and without merit,” Commissioner Bettman said.
We knew it would happen and we knew the fine would be huge. Lashing out like that when you’re a team executive is an absolute no-go. The league’s stance on making sure outlandish comments get punished is obvious, just ask Sean Avery about that. Lombardi was 100% wrong for choosing to handle things this way.
That said, the officials both on the ice and in the booth in Toronto were 100% wrong in their assessments of Martin Hanzal’s high-stick goal. When you blow a call that obvious to everyone on the ice and watching the game at home, there should be some brand of checks and balances to make sure people aren’t blowing calls so egregiously. Humans do make mistakes, which is why there’s instant replay for those instances. When that fails to work properly because of human error, it’s some sort of Twilight Zone kind of situation where the mostly-perfect implement is there to correct human mistakes but it fails because it’s controlled by people. The only solution to that is to hope people can be better at their job or at least receive better training or at the very least get reprimanded for their failures.
