Did The AHL Miss The Mark With Colby Williams’ Suspension?

Did the AHL miss the mark with Colby Williams’ suspension?

Tuesday morning brought news of the AHL’s supplementary discipline ruling regarding Colby Williams’ hit on Lehigh Valley Phantoms forward Danick Martel Saturday night in Allentown: a three-game suspension. As a result, Williams will miss the 2018 Outdoor Classic.

Williams found himself out of Saturday’s competition with the Phantoms after receiving a match penalty for the hit on Martel.

On Sunday, the teams rematched at Giant Center, and both sides had a slight edge. Nicolas Aube-Kubel, who fought Williams after the Martel hit on Saturday, put a hard hit into Connor Hobbs during the first period, causing a small scrap around the Bears net.

Speculation of what discipline Williams faced would take over social media until the American Hockey League announced their decision Tuesday morning.

There was shock from both fan bases; Hershey fans wondering how a hit like that gets a three-game suspension, Lehigh Valley fans calling for a 12 to 15 game suspension for Williams.

Let’s break down the hit again.

At full speed, the hit looks clean. Martel starts a breakout from his zone, and Williams is just outside the blueline. As Martel starts skating down the sideboard, Williams comes in at a 90-degree angle, stops in front of Martel and lays a hit on the Phantoms forward.

Once you start watching from other angles and slowing the video down, then you see the primary point of contact was Martel’s head. More specifically, his chin and jaw.

The American Hockey League rulebook references to this as an Illegal Check to the Head (Rule 48). An Illegal Check to the Head definition is as follow:

A hit resulting in contact with an opponent’s head where the head was the main point of contact and such contact to the head was avoidable is not permitted. In determining whether contact with an opponent’s head was avoidable, the circumstances of the hit including the following, shall be considered.

(i) Whether the player attempted to hit squarely through the opponent’s body and the head was not “picked” as a result of poor timing, poor angle of approach, or unnecessary extension of the body upward or outward.

(ii) Whether the opponent put himself in a vulnerable position by assuming a posture that made head contact on an otherwise full body check unavoidable.

(iii) Whether the opponent materially changed the position of his body or head immediately prior to or simultaneously with the hit in a way that significantly contributed to head contact.

With the first point, we know that the head was unavoidable due Williams’ angle of approach. So far, this is not an Illegal Check to the Head.

The second point could swing either way. Martel was leaning forward in a skating posture, making any direct body check a hit to the head. For argument’s sake, let’s say Martel did not put himself in a vulnerable position. We now have an Illegal Check to the Head.

Referees have two options for penalties for an Illegal Check to the Head.: a minor penalty, or a match penalty. What makes the difference between a minor penalty and a match penalty is the following (Rule 48.5):

The Referee, at his discretion, may assess a match penalty if, in his judgment, the player attempted to or deliberately injured his opponent with an Illegal Check to the Head. If deemed appropriate, supplementary discipline can be applied by the President at his discretion (refer to Rule 28).

Referee Nick Gill made the call on Williams from in front of the play. Gill was down ice facing Martel as Williams approached from his left. To decide between giving Williams a match penalty or a minor, Gill would have had to have felt that Williams “attempted to or deliberately injured” Martel with his check, ejecting him from the game.

From Gill’s vantage point, one could make the argument that Williams had the intent to injure Martel. Williams was given that match penalty, carrying with it an automatic indefinite suspension and review from President of the American Hockey League.

With Sunday’s game less than 24 hours later, a review was not conducted in time for puck drop, forcing Williams to stay suspended and add to any possible suspension.

The news came that evening that Martel had surgery to repair a broken jaw, and would be out of Lehigh Valley’s line-up for an indefinite period. It is still unknown if Martel sustained the injury from the hit, or from the repercussion of the hit when his head and jaw impacted with the ice.

From what I have gathered from Lehigh Valley media, Martel is expected to make a full recovery.

When the AHL announced Williams received a three-game suspension, I was first surprised. A three-game suspension is the same length Jay Rosehill received for an Illegal Check to the Head of Bears defenseman Patrick Wey, a hit that would ultimately end Wey’s hockey career, in 2014.

Rosehill’s hit was much more brutal than Williams’, raising an elbow to the head of a vulnerable Wey. Rosehill had a past history, receiving suspension once before in his career prior the one in 2014, along with multiple major misconduct penalties, including two in the first two games the same season the hit on Wey occurred. Rosehill did not receive a penalty for the hit on Wey.

Before Saturday’s game, Williams had one major penalty in his career; a fighting major from earlier in the season.

With all of this in mind, Chocolate Hockey reached out to the league to ask a few questions for this article: Was Williams’ past history taken into consideration? Did the league feel Williams deliberately injured Martel with his check? Are any outside forces (a player hitting his head on the ice after a check) taken into consideration when deciding on a suspension? Does the league take other illegal checks to the head and how many games a player was suspended for that hit into consideration when deciding on how many games a player could be suspended for a check that is being reviewed?

We were told the AHL does not comment on discipline reviews.

The ruling won’t change, and we may never know how the AHL came to their decision, but Hershey and Williams will have to face the fact he will miss the 2018 Outdoor Classic. “We were informed of the decision by the league this morning,” said Bryan Helmer in a statement to Chocolate Hockey. “Now that the ruling has been made, we have to accept it and move forward.”

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