Parros Making Example of Maple Leafs as Head of Player Safety

When it dropped that he received a five-game suspension, a few more eyebrows around the league were raised — especially considering that he would’ve been in the Lady Byng conversation just two weeks prior.

Regardless, the veteran defenceman who hasn’t been suspended in his 769 career NHL games, will appeal his suspension to Gary Bettman on Friday, while those around the league still search for the answers when it comes to consistency on these types of plays.

With that, here’s how suspensions have broken down league-wide during the Parros-driven DoPS era.

Parros, DoPS Have Made Example of Maple Leafs

In September 2017, Parros took on the role of senior vice president of player safety and head of the DoPS. He did so with a vow to renew the league’s focus on punishing non-hockey plays.

While his punishments have been severe in some case and seem to be taking these vows seriously, there have been other decisions that’ve come down from the DoPS that’ve left teams and fans dumbfounded. The inconsistencies in his supplemental discipline, at times, have been laughable.

With that, here are some numbers put together by Jeff Veillette, the director of player personnel for the Markham Royals of the OJHL.

Since the start of the 2017-18 season, the Maple Leafs are actually 29th most penalized team with 3,838 penalty minutes over those six and a half seasons. They are 30th when it comes to penalty minutes per game (with 7:34) and have the 27th most minors (1,506) over that span.

Major penalties, they have just 79 which is sixth fewest in the NHL over that span with one match penalty, 20 misconducts and four game misconducts — all within the lower third of the league since the start of 2017.

Counter that with the numbers that’ve come down from Parros and the DoPS. No team has had a player suspended more times than the Maple Leafs over that span — leading the way with 10 suspensions between the regular season and playoffs. Three of those were in-person hearings, another category in which the Maple Leafs are tops in the league since 2017.

They are the only team to have three or more suspensions of five games or more and while they don’t lead the way in overall games, they do come second in that category to the Washington Capitals — thanks to Tom Wilson.

Maple Leafs’ Infractions in 2023-24

As it pertains to this season, the Maple Leafs are currently 16th in the league in penalty minutes (500). They average 9:26 per game and have just three misconducts this season — one of which is the game misconduct belonging to Rielly.

As for Rielly, he would’ve been in the Lady Byng conversation just a week prior to the incident with the season he was having. He has 43 points in 50 games and is averaging 0.86 points per game.

Take away the 15 penalty minutes he received in the loss to the Senators and he’d be sitting at just eight penalty minutes on the season. That’s a career low and an average of just 0.16 minutes per game.

Even in his most penalized season, Rielly finished with 40 minutes in 82 games. So, the play the occurred was — as many have pointed out — quite unlike the veteran defenceman. Still, Parros called for an in-person hearing and following the major and game misconduct handed Rielly a five-game suspension.

Call it what you want from an outside perspective, but when looking at the numbers it seems odd that the Maple Leafs have had to answer to Parros to the extent that they have — especially when other non-hockey plays have gone unpenalized or penalized to a lesser extent.

As for Rielly, a first-time offender under the NHL’s own rules, he’s served three games of his five-game suspension with his appeal pending and the Maple Leafs are 3-0-0 over that span. Assuming the appeal doesn’t change anything, the Maple Leafs will take on the St. Louis Blues on Feb. 19 in a matinee affair.