Panarin calls out NHL Player Safety over the Marchand incident.

The National Hockey League has earned at least one new critic of their Department of Player Safety today.

New York Rangers forward Artemi Panarin is not happy with how the league has ruled on the incident that occured Friday afternoon during a game between the Rangers and the Boston Bruins. Earlier today the league issued Panarin a $5,000 fine for what they deemed "Unsportsmanlike Conduct" the maximum possible fine as per the rules of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Panarin has now had the chance to respond to that announcement and he's made it clear he is not happy with how the league has handled the incident. 

The Rangers star forward said he felt "it's not honest" of the Department of Player Safety to only issue him a fine for this incident, pointing to the comments Bruins forward Brad Marchand was accused of having made to him.

"It’s important to think that I didn’t start it. I didn’t say good things about him, too, but I think when you touch country, it’s different," said Panarin. "Probably all Russians would want to defend their country."

Thus far the NHL has not issued any kind of fine for Marchand as a result of his comments and I suspect that no such fine will be forthcoming. If the reporting regarding Marchand's comments has been accurate, his words did not cross any obvious line. While it is true that Marchand's comments were about Panarin's home country of Russia, they were in no way xenophobic or derogatory towards the Russian people. Perhaps additional public pressure, as well as pressure from Panarin and the Rangers, may lead to something but I wouldn't count on it.

As for why the league has opted to only issue a fine to one of the players involved in this altercation, it's pretty straight forward in my opinion. The league simply cannot allow players to be throwing objects from one bench to another, regardless of how harmless this particular incident may have been, otherwise things like this could easily escalate in the future.

The league is sending a message that this will not be tolerated, and unfortunately for Panarin he gets the worst of it.