Zac Rinaldo Will Earn a Lengthy Suspension for His Hit on Kris Letang
Zac Rinaldo will be suspended. After pressing the turbo button on a hit that drove Kris Letang’s head into the boards last night, Rinaldo will have an in-person discipline hearing with the NHL’s department of player safety, which will earn him a minimum six-game ban. Rinaldo, for his part, said he wasn’t surprise about the hearing because Letang is a star player, but still defended his hit:
“I hit him on the back side of the shoulder. I don’t know. The power of my hit made his head hit the glass. I didn’t hit him from behind. I hit him from the numbers on the backside of the shoulder.”
That may be true, but Rinaldo left his feet and Letang was looking the other way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7nr2UlQZxI
Frank Seravalli reported that Rinaldo, being a total jackass, joked that his hit “changed the whole game,” saying “who knows where the game would have gone if I didn’t do what I did.” What the hit did was put a bad penalty-kill unit on the ice for a long five minutes.