Rodrigues Fined $5,000 After His Stick Jab at Rossi Is Downgraded From a Spear to a Double Minor

A stick jab at a man’s throat, delivered before a faceoff had even been taken, ended with a fine and no missed games. New Jersey’s Evan Rodrigues struck Vancouver’s Marco Rossi in the throat and face area on Saturday night, was first called for a spearing major, and had the penalty downgraded on review to a double minor for high-sticking, Scouting the Refs reports. The Department of Player Safety completed the sequence on Sunday with a $5,000 fine, the maximum the collective bargaining agreement allows, NHL.com reports.

What happened at the faceoff?

A shove, an answer, and a stick where sticks cannot go. With ten seconds left in the second period, Rodrigues and Rossi lined up at centre ice after a false start, a faceoff that never cleanly happened. Rossi pushed Rodrigues back off the dot with a gloved hand, Daily Faceoff reports, and Rodrigues replied by lifting his stick up into Rossi’s neck area. Rossi crumpled to the ice, and the officials’ first instinct was the serious one: a spearing major, which carries an automatic game misconduct.

That first instinct is the part of the story the rest of the weekend argued with. The play happened in plain view, between two centres, with the puck not yet in play, which is why it travelled so fast and why the eventual punishment landed as a surprise.

Why did the major become a double minor?

Because the review split the act into a different rule. Scouting the Refs reports the referees decided there was no stabbing motion, which spearing under Rule 62 requires, and that the stick instead rode up into the neck, which is contact above the shoulders and a double minor for high-sticking under Rule 60.3. The downgrade cut the penalty from five minutes to four and removed the ejection that a spearing major would have forced.

Canucks coach Manny Malhotra told officials he disagreed with their explanation, Scouting the Refs reports, though he would not repeat what he was told. Vancouver’s practical compensation also shrank with the call: Rossi, treated as injured on the play, could not take the next faceoff even though he returned for the third period, Canucks Army reports, and a Boeser penalty soon cut the power play short. New Jersey won the game 4-1.

Why did Player Safety stop at a fine?

History, mostly Rodrigues’ own. He has played 620 regular-season games without a suspension, and this is only the second fine of his career, Canucks Army reports. Player Safety’s own filing followed the officials’ reclassification: the league fined him for high-sticking, not for spearing, NHL.com reports, and a maximum fine is the ceiling for that route without a hearing about games.

The contrast inside the same week is the cleanest way to see the scale. Frank Nazar was suspended for two games for an illegal check to the head of Bo Horvat, a first-time offender whose hit at least happened inside the flow of play. Rodrigues’ jab happened outside it, at a stoppage, and cost him money only. The difference the league is drawing is not about where contact lands. It is about what it decides the act was called.

What is the precedent for a downgrade plus a maximum fine?

An almost identical one, from the 2021 playoffs. Scouting the Refs records that Boston’s David Krejci had a spearing major reduced to a slashing minor on review in that run, and Player Safety then fined him the maximum $5,000 for the reclassified offence. Rodrigues’ case copies the pattern step for step: major on the ice, lesser stick offence after review, maximum fine the next day.

The counter-precedents are why the ruling is being argued about. The Hockey News points out that DeAngelo and Marchand have been suspended for spears aimed lower than the neck, and that Malkin has served multi-game bans for stick work to the face. Set beside those, a throat-area jab settled for the price of a minor equipment fine is the inconsistency case in one paragraph. The other side of the argument exists too: The Hockey News also notes some viewers thought Rossi went down easily, which is part of why the officials talked themselves out of the major.

What happens next for both players?

Very little, which is the ruling’s point and its problem. Rodrigues was available when New Jersey hosted Ottawa on Monday, and Rossi finished Saturday’s game, so neither roster changes. The case instead joins the season’s running argument about what reviews are for: the same weekend’s officials also reversed a wrong-man penalty on a hot mic in Boston and let a hit that injured Ekman-Larsson go entirely unpenalised before he practised a day later.

Three stick-and-hit cases, three different relationships between the first call and the final one. Rodrigues’ is the one that will be cited the next time a spear is reviewed down, because the league has now shown, twice in five years, exactly how that sequence ends.