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Victoria Royals handed heavy fine, suspensions for actions in final playoff game

The series between the Portland Winterhawks and Victoria Royals effectively ended when Victoria’s Brandon Magee checked Portland’s Nic Petan in the head with 4:01 left in regulation of Game 5, which Portland led 4-1 at the time and won 5-1.

The Winterhawks are moving on to face Kelowna in the highly anticipated Western Conference final, while the Royals franchise is a bit lighter in the wallet after stiff penalties were handed down by the WHL on Tuesday.

Magee got a 12-game suspension for his actions, while Steven Hodges got five games for his role in a similarly ugly second-period brawl. Almost as eye-popping, the Royals were fined $10,000. That’s the WHL’s largest fine for on-ice conduct going back to 2007-08 (the previous high over that span was $3,500).

Magee’s match penalty set off the second brawl of the night, a fracas that Petan unwisely reentered after getting up from the initial hit. Looking to get back at someone, Petan, jumped on the back of Royals defenceman Ryan Gagnon, who promptly battered Petan. The combination of Magee’s stick and Gagnon’s fists left the Hawks star recovering from a head injury this week (though Petan insists he’s fine after missing one practise).

Magee’s suspension is the longest in the league since Tri-City’s Brendan Shinnimin received 12 games for a boarding major in October 2010.

Though Magee’s actions were totally out of line (he also cross checked Brendan Leipsic in the ensuing mess), they aren’t necessarily unusual over the history of junior hockey. An aggressive sport mixed with emotional kids often leads to such incidents. Players making bad decisions is an unfortunate tradition of the junior game (though professionals certainly don’t always act all that mature, either). Because it was Magee’s second suspension of the season, he was given a harsh sentence he’ll have to serve if he returns for his overage season.

Hodges’ act was almost more baffling, given that it stemmed from a brawl that broke out at the end of the second period, when he had just scored to bring the Royals within 3-1.

With 20 minutes left in an elimination game that was still within reach for the Royals, one wonders why anyone on the ice would put himself in the position of getting thrown out of a game his team had to win.

Hodges originally fought with Portland’s Dominic Turgeon, while a secondary fight broke out between the Winterhawks’ Derrick Pouliot and the Royals’ Joe Hicketts.

For being in the second fight, Hicketts and Pouliot picked up automatic game misconducts. Pouliot earned cheers from the Portland crowd for planting Hicketts on the ice with a solid right (Hicketts has since been cleared to play for Canada in the U18 championship), but did his team a disservice by being booted from an important third period.

Hodges upped the ante, though, when he inexplicably threw two punches to the back of Pouliot’s head as he was being led away from the fray by a linesman. Those punches earned him an extra minor penalty, a game misconduct and the suspension.

Instead of opening the third period with 1:56 of power-play time, the Royals had to settle with a 4-on-4 situation with their most reliable scorer in the series stuck in the dressing room.

Portland may not be 100 per cent blameless here, either, as the Winterhawks engage opponents with their mouths much more freely than with their fists. What’s said on the ice stays out of the range of broadcast microphones, though, making it impossible to know if any verbal sparring contributed to the melees.

A lack of punishment for the Hawks, though, suggests that the league has absolved them of any substantive responsibility.

Tuesday’s punishments are surprisingly severe. Perhaps the WHL is setting a new bar for discipline, and dialing up the financial penalty to teams in order to get coaching staffs to cut this kind of thing out before it starts.

Of course, the league also could be taking a harsh stand because the game was televised on Shaw and brawls are not something the CHL wants to be associated with these days. Especially when both Hicketts and Petan were pummeled to the extent that they needed assistance to get off the ice.

The situation is an unfortunate coda to what has been a tremendous season for Victoria, which won 48 games and advanced to the second round of the playoffs for the first time in franchise history.