Blues’ Binnington to sit two games for scuffle
St. Louis Blues goaltender Jordan Binnington was suspended for two games by the NHL Department of Player Safety on Thursday for roughing and unsportsmanlike conduct against the Minnesota Wild on Wednesday night.
Under the terms of the collective bargaining agreement, and based on his average annual salary, Binnington will forfeit $64,864.86. The money goes to the Players’ Emergency Assistance Fund.
At 12:25 of the second period in the Blues’ 8-5 loss, Minnesota forward Ryan Hartman scored the go-ahead goal to break a 4-4 tie. While skating over to celebrate with teammates, Hartman made contact with Binnington’s leg pad outside of the St. Louis crease. Binnington spun around and skated to the Wild players, throwing a punch with his blocker glove while holding his goalie stick.
Moments after that incident, NHL linesmen had to keep Binnington and Minnesota goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury from having a fight.
Binnington received a minor penalty for leaving his crease and a match penalty.
The NHL said the retaliatory nature of the play was a catalyst for the suspension.
“What causes this play to rise to the level of a suspension is the act of a goaltender using his blocker in this manner, the retaliatory nature of the blow, the location and force with which it lands and the game circumstances under which it occurred,” said the Department of Player Safety in its explanation. “Recklessly entering an opponent’s goal celebration long after the play has ended for the purposes of seeking retribution will not be tolerated.”
This is the first time Binnington has either been suspended or fined by the NHL in his 214-game NHL career.
The Blues goalie, who led them to the 2019 Stanley Cup championship as a rookie, has earned a reputation for being an emotional player who frequently engages with opponents. He’s known to jaw with opposing benches during games, as he did with the Wild on Tuesday night, and get physical with opposing players. Last December, when Binnington had an incident against the Pittsburgh Penguins, Blues coach Craig Berube said, “It’s got to stop. It doesn’t help anything. … Just play goal, stop the puck.”
On Tuesday night, Berube was more supportive of Binnington within the context of the play.
“He went right in the crease and hit Binner and Binner reacted, which I don’t have a problem with. The guy went right in there,” Berube said. “I’m not going to condone hitting like he did. That’s going to be a match [penalty] every time. But he’s reacting on what Hartman did.”
Binnington will miss games at the Washington Capitals on Friday and at home against the Winnipeg Jets on Sunday.
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Jesse Rogers, ESPN Staff Writer
CHICAGO — The Chicago Cubs activated center fielder Cody Bellinger from the injured list while placing pitcher Daniel Palencia on it, the team announced Tuesday afternoon.
Bellinger, 28, has been out with a rib injury since running into the wall at Wrigley Field on April 23. He’ll be the designated hitter Tuesday and Wednesday against the San Diego Padres before the team decides if he is ready to play the outfield again.
Bellinger said he is not 100% healed yet.
“It takes a bit of time to be fully pain-free,” he said Tuesday before the game. “It’s a matter of pain tolerance. I feel like I’m in a good spot with it.”
Bellinger took batting practice Monday, ran the bases and performed drills in the outfield before being cleared.
“Ribs feel good,” Bellinger said. “Had a good test, facing some live pitching. Felt like it was a good time to come back.”
Bellinger was hitting .226 with five home runs and an OPS of .760 before his injury. The Cubs could also play him at first base moving forward as rookie Pete Crow-Armstrong has played well in center field since being called up from Triple-A Iowa. The plan, though, is eventually to get Bellinger back in center field.
“You want to have your best players in the lineup,” manager Craig Counsell said. “You want to put your best team out there as much as you can. Getting Cody back puts us in a step in the right direction.”
Outfielder Alexander Canario was optioned to Triple-A Iowa to make room for Bellinger on the roster.
Palencia was placed on the injured list after feeling pain in his right shoulder on the final pitch he threw in Monday’s win over San Diego. The team is awaiting MRI results to determine his next course of action. Right-hander Keegan Thompson was recalled from Triple-A to take his place.
Joining Canario in Iowa will be right fielder Seiya Suzuki, who will begin a two-day rehab assignment before joining the big league team in Pittsburgh on Friday. He has been out since mid-April after injuring his right oblique while running to first base.
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Kiley McDaniel, ESPN MLB Insider
Major League Baseball has sent a warning to clubs about encouraging players subject to the MLB draft to withdraw from high school baseball to become eligible to sign as international players. An MLB spokesman declined comment.
The key section of the memo sent to teams Monday and obtained by ESPN reads: “It has come to our attention that Clubs have been encouraging amateur players in the United States to withdraw from, or otherwise refrain from playing, high school baseball in the United States and/or Canada, in order to try to establish residency in a foreign country, in an effort to make themselves eligible to sign under the International Amateur Talent System instead of the Rule 4 Draft.”
In the MLB draft, picks largely cannot be traded, so teams’ access to elite players is largely determined by their draft order. In the international system, teams have similar-sized bonus pools, and any player is able to be negotiated with. All but the best handful of players are acquirable by every team in the international market.
In the memo, the league clarified the rules around eligibility and what rules teams were breaking by encouraging players to change their eligibility. The memo says that encouraging players to make this change “shall be subject to significant penalties, including, but not limited to, the denial of player selection rights under the [MLB draft] or loss of benefits under the International Amateur Talent System.”
A recent example of a legal version of this maneuver was made by shortstop Lucius Fox in 2015. He was a native of the Bahamas who had moved to Florida to play high school baseball and was regarded as a fringe first-round prospect after his junior year of high school. Fox moved back to the Bahamas and was declared a free agent by the league in April 2015, eventually signing for $6 million with the San Francisco Giants in July 2015.
The international bonus pools weren’t hard-capped then like they are now, so that sort of bonus is unlikely, but this illustrates the potential benefit of this kind of move. Fox would’ve received roughly half that bonus if he had stayed in the draft process, but he was evaluated differently as an 18-year-old in the international market, where the biggest bonuses are largely given to 16-year-old prospects. Fox, now 26 years old, is a free agent. He has played in 10 big league games, all in 2022 for the Washington Nationals.
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