Senators winger Nick Cousins has made a career out of being hard to play against, getting under people's skin, and pretty much doing whatever is required to help his team win. Opponents often don't care for his tactics, and sometimes the NHL doesn't either. So, on Tuesday, the league put its foot down. Kind of.
The NHL announced that Cousins has been fined $2,000 as supplementary discipline under NHL Rule 64 (Diving/Embellishment). He was flagged for falling to the ice a little too easily in a game against the Utah Mammoth earlier this month.
According to the league, Rule 64 is designed to bring attention to and more seriously penalize players (and teams) who repeatedly dive and embellish in an attempt to draw penalties.
In a business where even the lowest-paid employees are making close to a million dollars, it's hard not to chuckle over the notion that the league might believe there's anything "serious" about a $2000 fine. That's an amount most players can recoup from under their floor mats the next time they get their Mercedes detailed.
But the real punishment isn't financial. It's the attention and stigma of being publicly labelled a diver. To many NHL players, it's a scarlet letter. No hockey player in this country wants to be thought of as a diver. It's an incredible contrast to professional soccer, where diving and pretending to be injured to fool the referee is appreciated by most and tolerated by all.
But most North American hockey fans can't stand it. As an example, there's a popular Instagram account with almost 20K followers, entirely devoted to "exposing the divers/embellishers of the NHL."
NHL Dives invites followers to DM them with any dives they witness in the NHL, and the video of the offender's theatrics and fakery is quickly posted for all to see. They even post standings, or as they call it, "The Diving Board."
With Cousins' second infraction, that's when automatic fines start to kick in.
Cousins was issued a warning in a game at Washington on Oct. 25, though he really didn't do much embellishing. He was slashed on the back of the leg, though not very hard, and dropped briefly to one knee.
His second citation, which triggered the $2,000 fine, was issued for an incident vs. Utah on Nov. 9. Utah forward JJ Peterka was assessed a minor penalty for interference on a play where Cousins fell to the ice without taking much contact at all.
Once a team takes four diving penalties in a season, their coach is also on the hook for all future dives, starting at $2000 for a fifth dive, then escalating to a cap of $5000 for the eighth dive and every dive after that.
That can also be an effective deterrent, because no player wants to aggravate or take money away from the man who controls his ice time.
Steve Warne
The Hockey News