The Jets' season came to an end Monday thanks to a sweep by the Canadiens. Watching from above the ice was the team's points leader from the regular season, Mark Scheifele. The loss marked the third straight game he was missing after being assessed a four-game suspension by the NHL's Department of Player Safety for charging the Canadiens' Jake Evans in Game 1.
"Obviously, it’s crushing that my season was ended by that and I wasn’t able to play in this series," he said. "I thought I was going to be tried to be shut down by Phillip Danault [the Canadiens' top defensive forward], and it was the Department of Player Safety that shut me down. That definitely sucks. But that’s life."
Scheifele has never been suspended before or even fined. He played in 575 regular-season and 33 postseason games and had only one major and three misconducts. His one major was for dropping the gloves with the Hurricanes' Brett Pesce during the 2019-20 season, per hockeyfights.com. The game misconduct he received on the play was the first of his career.
Winnipeg's best forward was forced to sit and watch as his team followed up its sweep of the Oilers by getting swept. He hasn't shown much remorse regarding the play. Days after he called the suspension "excessive" and said he "regrets the outcome," he still is confused by the suspension that will now carry over to the first game of the 2021-22 season.
"Obviously I had my chance to speak my piece in the hearing. I don't know how much was actually absorbed by them. It’s a hard one," he said before later adding, once again, his explanation of the play.
"At the end of the day, I was trying to negate a goal, I’m coming back on the backcheck to prevent a goal and to try and go the other way. I’ve played 6-on-5 my entire life. I’m out there to score goals, I’m not out there to hit guys. I’m trying to prevent a goal and trying to win a game. So I would have loved an answer from them of what would have been a better thing to do. I’ve replayed the thing over and over again in my mind, and the only real thing is if I gave up on my teammates on that play and just didn’t backcheck."
MORE: Explaining the NHL's decision to suspend Mark Scheifele
When asked if the suspension will change the way he plays, Scheifele said during a long answer: "I can't dwell on that hit for the rest of my life. That’s only going to bring me down. I’m a very, very positive person, I’m a very, very happy person. And that definitely took away from a lot of my happiness, a lot of my joy of this beautiful game."
Not a great look from him when he skated almost 200 feet and opted to hit an opponent who outraced everyone to negate an icing and probably wasn't expecting it on an empty-net wraparound goal. As noted by the Department of Player Safety, Scheifele never made an attempt to play the puck, and it was pretty obvious to everyone else in the building or watching on television that Evans was going to score — which he did — and there wasn't much of a chance of Scheifele stopping it from happening — which he didn't.
Regardless of where you fall on the spectrum of whether it was a clean hit, based on Wednesday's comments, Scheifele still seems to think he is the victim and doesn't really seem to be taking any responsibility for his actions.
"It’s over and done with it," he added. "I’m not going to continue to cry over it. But it’s the decision they made. I still believe it was excessive. They knocked me out of the series. I don’t even get a chance to play with my teammates and battle with my teammates in the series. For a guy with a clean record . . . I’m just going to stop talking before I get fined or something like that, so I’ll leave it as it is.”