Breaking: NHL announces ruling on Tom Wilson's hit from last night.

The National Hockey League's Department of Player Safety has made it's decision. 

On Friday night during a match up between the New Jersey Devils and the Washington Capitals at Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C. there was yet another hit from Capitals tough guy Tom Wilson that caused quite a stir around the hockey world. The hit occurred in the final minutes of the game's second period and was delivered by Wilson to 22 year old New Jersey Devils forward Brett Seney and initially it seemed like another questionable hit from the Capitals bruising forward.

Seney certainly did his part in selling the whole thing, falling to the ice and laying hunched over down on the playing surface while clutching at his head with both hands, this in spite of the fact that video replay appears to show that no contact was ever made with his head. In spite of this however Wilson was sent first to the penalty box and then eventually tossed from the game with a game misconduct for an alleged hit to the head of Seney, something the Capitals were none too happy about. Capitals head coach Todd Reirden was reportedly quite fired up after the game and made it clear he did not agree with the ruling from the NHL's officials.

"[Wilson] isn't even intending to make a hit," said Reirden as per our earlier report. "It's incidental contact, and he is following his defenseman down the wall, the player backs into him, he tries to get out of the way of the player, makes himself as small as possible, and there's incidental contact."

"This guy is doing everything he can to try to play the right way, and this is how things are happening. It''s a tough situation. We just have two players that got concussions, they don't even call a penalty on [those hits]."

Well it seems that those who share Reirden's point of view have now received some measure of vindication as the league has issued a statement, at least privately, regarding the hit from Wilson to Seney. Two independent sources now confirm that the NHL will not seek additional discipline against Wilson for this particular incident, which alone speaks volumes when you consider just how often Wilson has been suspended as of late for hits of a similar nature.

The story was first broken by Chris Ryan of NJ Advanced Media who revealed that a league source had informed him that the NHL would not seek to suspend Wilson for the hit. That report was later echoed by TSN NHL insider Bob McKenzie who was able to confirm that the Washington Capitals organization has been informed that there will be no hearing for Wilson regarding his hit on Brett Seney.

Now obviously neither of these are official statements from the NHL but given the quality of reporting from both of these men I think it's more than safe to say that there will be no additional discipline coming down the pipeline for Wilson and based on the replay it seems like the correct call has been made here. Once again however you can watch the video replay and judge for yourselves.

[pub]