Wild's Ryan Hartman Faces Lengthy Suspension

That's Wild

The Minnesota Wild lost badly Saturday night to an Ottawa Senators team that is trying to stake a claim to one of the two Wild Card spots over in the Eastern Conference. Surprisingly, the 6-0 defeat and the end of a three-game winning streak was not what was most embarrassing coming out of that match.

Wild forward Ryan Hartman drove the face of Senators star Tim Stutzle down to the ice, causing him to be cut open at his eyebrow, off of a little faceoff battle. He was promptly given a match penalty and kicked out of the game. But that's not all he will face in punishment as the NHL's Department of Player Safety announced that Hartman will be having an in-person hearing, which opens up the possibility of a suspension over five games.

Hartman has been known to have a hot streak. Not the good kind, don't worry. A streak of play where his head runs so hot that he just has to exert his energy into hurting someone in a non-hockey way.

He has been fined by the league a total of seven times, most recently on January 2 for high-sticking. And additionally, Hartman has been suspended four times: One game for an illegal hit to the head in 2018; one game for interference in 2023; two games for tripping in 2023; and most recently three games for unsportsmanlike conduct when he threw his stick towards an official in April of last year.

He has a past and we shouldn't be surprised if the law gets laid down and he is suspended for something close to double-digit games.

• Yakov Trenin has not been as good as some people hoped, but does the free agent acquisition from last summer look a lot better in the light of the upcoming cap explosion? [Hockey Wilderness]
• A great story on how Marco Rossi has turned to becoming a first-line center in the NHL; what we all hoped he would become in Minnesota. [StarTribune]

Off the trail...

• Boy, there were a lot of trades last week. First, we saw the Flyers send two former first-round picks in Joel Farabee and Morgan Frost to the Flames in exchange for some draft picks, a pending free agent, and an interesting young winger. [Broad Street Hockey]
• And then the saga over in Vancouver has ended as J.T. Miller was shipped out to the Rangers. While he might just be an uber-competitive guy, he has no ill will towards the Canucks after the trade. [Sportsnet]
• With some of the return they got for Miller, Vancouver got top-four defenseman Marcus Pettersson as they try to still compete for a playoff spot and not waste another season of Quinn Hughes and Elias Pettersson (while the latter is still in Vancouver). [The Province]