The damage is done form Evgeni Malkin’s scary high sticking incident on Michael Raffl from Monday night, but he still took some time to reflect on it following his one game suspension.
As a refresher, Malkin was forced to sit out a game after swinging his stick with one hand near Raffl’s head. Luckily his blade nearly missed, but the play was dirty enough to force him to miss the Pens’ Wednesday night tilt against the Edmonton Oilers. Once again, Malkin answered questions on the play and shared a few interesting comments in his scrum. After accusing Raffl of “diving” on the play, he made sure to include a comment on missing out on his game check.
“Miss one game, miss money.” The man is making $9.5 million a year so it’s tough to feel THAT bad for him… Besides, a lot of hockey fans probably consider him lucky for not getting a harsher punishment.
Before accusing Raffl of embellishment, Malkin attempted to defend himself by arguing the play wasn’t dirty because it didn’t actually make contact with his face. Though he did take responsibility for the whole thing… Kind of weird, no?
Malkin lost out on $115,853.66 with the suspension but hey, we think he’ll be okay. You can probably expect there to be some bad blood when the two teams meet again in Pittsburgh on March 17.
(H/T Josh Yohe)
