Oooo, the injustice!

As many of you already know, Gunnar is on a AA Atom hockey team (his second year in Atom, first on a AA team), and so next year he moves up to PeeWee. At the Atom level, hard physical contact is not allowed and players are penalized if they do. At the PeeWee level, rough play is allowed, though obvs nothing too bad. There's a couple of guys on his team who are constantly in the penalty box because of rough play. Gunnar, not so much. I mean, I've seen him push players who are slashing at his goalie, things like that, but a real infraction... no.

Well, at his last game (which neither Tyler or I was at due to other commitments, Gunnar went with another family), Gunnar got his first real penalty for rough play. And let me say, it was a doozy. We're talking about a one-game suspension here. But there's a lesson to be learned -- the ref is not always in the right, and there's two sides to every story. Here's what happened, according to Gunnar (and his coach and team manager back him 100% in this).

A player on the opposing team got a break-away and Gunnar raced toward him to intercept the puck. Now, any hockey player who knows his stuff KNOWS that you always keep your head up and your eye on your surroundings, so you don't get blindsided by another player coming at you. But that little guy must have missed that lesson. That guy was coming up to the net by the sideboard and Gunnar came at him like a ton of bricks. Smash! into the sideboard. The kid went down hard, as did Gunnar, and he's screaming and crying that his leg was broken. Pandemonium ensued. Gunnar got sent to the penalty box and was issued an immediate suspension from that game and for the next one, as well.

The player was carried to his own bench, still howling. Everyone is thinking he'd be rushed to the hospital any moment for his "broken leg". Minutes pass, he's quieted down by that point. Next shift, he's back out on the ice, smiling and playing as if nothing had happened! The kid had lied!

At that point, upon seeing this, you'd think the ref would realize what had happened and rescind Gunnar's suspension from both games. NO. So Gunnar had to sit there and watch that little brat skate around, grinning, watching his team get hammered 11-1, knowing that this injustice had occurred but not being able to do anything about it.

His coach and team manager tried their hardest to get the suspension overturned, but unless the team was willing to pay $150, it wasn't going to happen. So Gunnar has to sit out the game tonight. He's still required to show up, but he can't play.

I'm choosing to look at this as fate in play. Who knows, maybe if Gunnar had played tonight he himself would have got an injury. I don't know. He DID deserve a penalty for smashing the kid into the sideboard, but a suspension? No. So there's a lesson there for Gunnar, as well.