A lot of people are criticizing Zac Rinaldo after his actions in a game against the Colorado Avalanche.
The altercation all started after Rinaldo laid a clean hit on the Avs Nathan MacKinnon. With the way the NHL runs nowadays, he may have been expecting some retaliation for that hit, because usually when a star player gets laid out, someone is there to fight regardless of the legality.
It turns out that wasn’t the case on Saturday night, but shortly after his hit on MacKinnon, Samuel Girard did give him a bump and Rinaldo reacted by hammering him with a punch.
While many people were laying into Rinaldo, Paul Bissonnette, a broadcaster for the Pheonix Coyotes and former NHL enforcer, came to his defence. Watching the video, it looks like a sucker punch and Biz acknowledges his history, but he felt as though Girard sent the wrong message by skating toward Rinaldo after the hit.
It appears as if the NHL DOPS is going to dish out some punishment for the punch. They offered Rinaldo an in-person hearing, which usually means that the infraction will be punished with a suspension of six games or more.
