{"id":109931,"date":"2021-05-17T10:21:20","date_gmt":"2021-05-17T14:21:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/?p=109931"},"modified":"2021-05-17T14:30:58","modified_gmt":"2021-05-17T18:30:58","slug":"sam-bennett-suspended-boarding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2021\/05\/17\/sam-bennett-suspended-boarding\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Bennett Suspended One Game For Boarding Blake Coleman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This morning, the NHL Department of Player Safety announced that Panthers centre Sam Bennett is suspended one game for boarding the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/category\/lightning\/\" target=\"_self\">Tampa Bay Lightning<\/a>&#8216;s Blake Coleman.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Florida\u2019s Sam Bennett has been suspended for one game for Boarding Tampa Bay\u2019s Blake Coleman. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/sQgkaojSGh\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/t.co\/sQgkaojSGh<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 NHL Player Safety (@NHLPlayerSafety) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NHLPlayerSafety\/status\/1394357459507163138?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">May 17, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Panthers&#8217; Sam Bennett Suspended One Game<\/h2>\n<p>The play occurred at 12:19 of the third period during last night&#8217;s Game 1 of the series. Bennett was assessed a two-minute minor for charging on the play. This would be Bennett&#8217;s first suspension at the NHL level. Bennett gained velocity (hence the charging penalty) and hit Coleman from behind, hard, right into the boards.<\/p>\n<p>If Florida is to lose Bennett for any period of time during this series, it would certainly be a death wish for their chances at an upset. The 24-year-old forward flourished in top-six role-playing with Jonathan Huberdeau before the seasons&#8217; end. After a few poor seasons in Calgary, Bennett exploded for 15 points in 10 games down the stretch. He&#8217;s become responsible for a lot of Florida&#8217;s scoring outside of their big-name talents. If they want to keep up with Tampa&#8217;s monstrous offence, Bennett will need to be a part of that. He showed he could do that at the playoff level, too, posting two assists in last night&#8217;s game.<\/p>\n<h3>What This Means for the Future<\/h3>\n<p>If Bennett is out for at least a game, it&#8217;s likely that Alexander Wennberg will step into the second-line centre role for Florida. The 26-year-old Swede has had something of a reclamation year himself. After signing a one-year deal in free agency, Wennberg regained some of his offensive touches, scoring 17 goals and 29 points in 56 games. The Panthers could see one of Aleksi Heponiemi, Eetu Luostarinen, or Lucas Wallmark step into the lineup to fill out a bottom-six centre role. Regardless, this news of a Sam Bennett hearing can&#8217;t sit well with this team&#8217;s chances to win the series.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo:<br \/>\n<a id=\"zCSEhV5IRzJKr7cR3FOvKg\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1318371415\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'zCSEhV5IRzJKr7cR3FOvKg',sig:'eVciYaQBv_qEWqiHD1ihA6R97d7SAUeXXz80Vfo7t5U=',w:'594px',h:'405px',items:'1318371415',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This morning, the NHL Department of Player Safety announced that Panthers centre Sam Bennett is suspended one game for boarding the Tampa Bay Lightning&#8216;s Blake Coleman. Florida\u2019s Sam Bennett has been suspended for one game for Boarding Tampa Bay\u2019s Blake Coleman. https:\/\/t.co\/sQgkaojSGh \u2014 NHL Player Safety (@NHLPlayerSafety) May 17, 2021 Panthers&#8217; Sam Bennett Suspended One [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3006,"featured_media":109934,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4547,34,4548],"tags":[774,3517,1727],"class_list":["post-109931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-panthers","category-hockey","category-news","category-nhl","tag-alexander-wennberg","tag-blake-coleman","tag-sam-bennett"],"modified_by":"Jim Biringer","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3006"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}