That's the video the league has to go off of. I wish them luck, as its hard to see much of anything. Of course, many 'hawks fans missed it in real time - but that's a different story. It was called a charge, which the league looks at differently than a check to the head.
At the worst, it looks to me to be a hockey play gone wrong. The puck arrives in Champ's skates about the same time as Wardley lays the hit. Its a full speed head on collision, which always looks bad & often times has injurious results.
One positive I saw in the video is that Champ's leg looks hurt. Its hard to cast that as a positive, but I'm just hoping that his head is OK - we tend to assume its a head injury when a guy is laying in a heap like that. You'd rather deal with a leg injury than a brain injury, right? This is a player who missed time with a brain injury last season, and has been known to engage in hockey fights.
It should be interesting to see how the WHL handles this. We've seen these things left as 5 min + the game being adequate punishment lately. We've seen mystery suspensions as well. Often the league leaves these alone for a few days to evaluate the injured players status, as that tends to factor into the punishment.
All major penalties are automatically reviewed for subsequent discipline. I'm not sure if there is a secret Canadian holiday Monday or Tuesday - so presumably the WHL offices are open this week. As of noon on Saturday there's nothing on the WHL's discipline page.
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