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Just as Connor McDavid is set to return from his three-game suspension to the Edmonton Oilers line-up against Seattle Monday night, hockey’s most venerated commentator Don Cherry has weighed in to condemn the various unpenalized holds and grips Vancouver’s Conor Garland used on McDavid, provoking McDavid to lash pack.

“It was ridiculous,” said Cherry on his Gravepine podcast. “I mean, he (Garland) really did really have him tied up.”

But Cherry felt the NHL’s George Parros in Player Safety had to give both McCavid and Tyler Myers equal suspensions for their respective crosschecks to the head.

“Well, you had to give him three games if the other guy (Myers) gets three games.”

Cherry also said the two-minute instigator penalty in NHL fights for a player who stands up for his star teammate is ridiculous. The stars were better protected in the past, he said. “Everybody used to take care, take care of (Guy Lafleur), take care of (Steve) Shutt…. Say you pick on Shutt. There’s a guy coming. Took care of their own. And then somebody made this rule that now you have two, five and a ten. The instigator rule.”

Cherry said when he himself coached in the1970s he didn’t want his star players fighting, such as top defender Brad Park, who had led the New York Rangers in fights, but quit fighting in Boston after Cherry had a word with him.

Cherry told him not to fight, with Park then asking what he should do if someone speared him.

“I says, ‘Don’t worry, there’ll be somebody there to take care of.’ And after that, he never had a fight.”

My take

1. Some will scoff at what old man Cherry says about enforcers keeping the peace back in the day, but I can attest that in his time with the Oilers at least Wayne Gretzky was never once mauled or abused like Conor Garland did to McDavid. And no one dumped Paul Coffey on his head the way Corey Perry picked up and dropped Vancouver’s Quinn Hughes a few days later, I’ll add.

Not that Garland was overly forceful or nasty in wrestling McDavid out of the play. Garland was simply effective and evidently acting within the rules of the NHL circa 2025. The rules of the NHL circa 1985 might well have permitted a similar light mauling, but there was indeed a massive deterrent, the fear of taking a beating from Dave Semenko, Mark Messier or Kevin McClelland. Perhaps that kind of fearsome presence did keep the stars from such constant and ongoing abuse back in the day.

2. I’ve heard one other theory, though, first put forward by hockey writer Jonathan Willis that so much more money is on the line for even bottom line players now that they would not be intimidated by the likes of Semenko or Marty McSorely, that if a new million dollar contract or contracts were on the line players in the 1980s would have gone after Gretzky, Jari Kurri, Paul Coffey and the other Oilers stars just as much as Garland and Adrian  “Slewfoot” Kempe went after McDavid.

People will do much for a small amount of money. What will they do for millions of dollars? Will they face up to fearsome intimidators and bash stars willy nilly, so much as the NHL permits?

I put a lot of weight in this idea. I believe it a sound theory. And this is why that in the big money NHL of today, the only thing that will slow player aggression is the league itself, through proper reffing of games and through stiff fines and suspensions.

In the currant instances, instead of getting nothing, Garland should have been handed a double minor and Kempe, instead of a $5000 fine, should have been suspended five games.