Carcillo suspended 2 games

In other words, Gary Bettman sucks major penis.

The NHL has suspended Flyers forward Daniel Carcillo for two games for a hit on David Clarkson on Sunday.

At 15:14 of the third period of Sunday’s game, Carcillo and Clarkson came together, and during some pushing and shoving, Carcillo high-sticked Clarkson in the face, opening a cut.

Carcillo was assessed a match penalty, which brought automatic League review. Clarkson thought the League’s decision was fair.

“As a player, you don’t like to see anybody get suspended,” Clarkson said Tuesday afternoon. “I think it’ll maybe teach him to keep his stick down a bit when he goes up to a guy.”

Clarkson said this morning that he didn’t have any expectations regarding a suspension.

“It doesn’t matter to me which way it happened,” Clarkson said. “The League made a decision to do it. If he would have come and asked me to fight, I would have fought him. But I just didn’t expect the stick to get me there like it did. That’s kind of it.”

Clarkson couldn’t tell if the high-stick was deliberate.

“When you have two hands on your stick, I think it’s hard to (say),” he explained. “If you had one hand, maybe. But I think the way he did it, I don’t know if he was trying to get my attention. Maybe he was trying to hit me somewhere else. I guess you have to have control of your stick when you’re out there.”

Both players are natives of the greater Toronto area.

“I know Danny well,” said Clarkson. “I don’t think it was something he would mean to do to me. It was nothing too serious. He’ll serve his two games and he’ll be back helping them out.”

Carcillo is fourth in the NHL with 196 penalty minutes, but he also has 11 goals and 20 points in 72 games and has played a large portion of the season on the Flyers’ top line, with Mike Richards and Simon Gagne. He also leads the team with 181 hits.

Carcillo will miss games Thursday against the Islanders and Saturday against the Canadiens. This is his second suspension of the season, following a four-game ban in December for an incident with Washington’s Matt Bradley.

-NHL.com