Every once in a while the team at The Morning Skate gets an opportunity to get an inside look at the day to day of the big brass in the hockey world. Just recently our team was gifted the opportunity to see how the process works for George Parros and the NHL Player Safety department in terms of determining what punishment to dish out to a player who had committed an egregious sin on the ice.
Luckily, this opportunity was bestowed upon us the past couple of weeks where multiple incidents happened on the ice that required Big Georgie’s attention:
After spending some time with Parros, we really don’t know how he finds the time to analyze these situations the way he does to make sure the proper punishment is handed out. Between reminiscing on his career -11 rating and 18 goals in 474 games played, playing NHL 2013, and watching every episode of The Golden Bachelor 4 times each, the man hardly has time to breathe.
But make no mistake, the man is on a mission.
10:30pm CT on November 25th, the big man’s phone rings.
“Hello?”
“Yes Lord Parros, sorry to phone you past your bedtime. But did you see Jacob Trouba attempted to decapitate Trent Frederic?”
“No, I was on franchise mode in NHL ’13, like I always am between 5-10pm on week nights”
“Well, what do you think we should do sir?”
“Give me a second padawan”.
Parros then springs out of his bed and sprints to his living room and opens a cabinet on the wall, a bedazzled dart board unveiled within. He quickly puts on his Florida Panthers cape that they gave him to finally retire, then zips a dart at the board.
“All good, give him a $5,000 fine”.
“But sir, he legitimately tried killing the guy. Like people are photo shopping him into Game of Thrones scenes and it actually fits fine.”
“What’s done is done.”
“Yes, Lord Parros.”
George then removes his cape and returns back to his slumber.
We were lucky enough to get to spend a few weeks with Georgie, which was great because we got to see his elaborate process of determining the punishments given for the incident at the Red Wings vs Sens game on 12/9.
A similar phone call as the one described above transpired, only this time Parros was deep into a pack of strawberry seltzers during his weekly erotic novel book club.
He didn’t want to show off too much in front of his friends by putting his cape on and showcasing his elite dart skills, so he simply wrote down some punishment options on folded pieces of paper. He then told his friend to pick one out of the hat, as if it was going to turn into some elaborate party game. He scampered back into his office and urgently called his team to let them know to suspend David Perron 6 games for cross checking someone who had knocked Perron’s captain out cold.
“But Lord Parros, this offense is nowhere near as bad as Trouba trying to decapitate someone. I’ve actually heard that they’re recruiting him to be a guest star on season 2 of House of The Dragon after seeing his slashing form”.
“I spent hours looking at the footage cadet, now put out the tweet so it’s official and I can go back to my book club”.
Getting to see this elaborate, thorough work process up close is something TMS will never take for granted, much like Georgie and somehow scoring 18 goals in under 500 games. Stay tuned for the next installment of Inside the NHL with The Morning Skate, where we ask Gary Bettman how he came up with the idea of a best on best international tournament that doesn’t include half the countries with players in the NHL.
*for any idiots out there this is all satirical and we didn’t get to spend time with George Parros, however this is our official theory of how all of these decisions get made.
The Morning Skate 
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