Well folks, it wasn’t much of a surprise. The NHL has brought the hammer down on Winnipeg Jets forward Brendan Lemieux. He will be suspended for the next two games against Colorado and New Jersey at home.
Lemieux laid a dirty headshot on Vincent Trocheck of the Florida Panthers in the Finland Global Series. Lemieux was backchecking, while Trocheck was in the midst of passing the puck to another Panther, when Lemieux caught him clean in the head with his shoulder. Trocheck didn’t see him and was knocked down to the ice. The video of the hit and fight can be watched here.
Trocheck appeared to be quite shaken up but remained in the game. The hit resulted in no injury, but Lemieux and Mackenzie Weegar dropping the mitts and had a little brawl. Lemieux remained tough, and destroyed Weegar in the fight, throwing most of the punches and letting Weeger have a mere one or two shots at him.
The Winnipeg Jets forward is lucky he’s only a first time offender, or the punishment could’ve been quite a bit worse. There’s not much I have to say about it, other than he needs to clean up his game. Brendan Lemieux is definitely one of my favourite Jets, but seriously, we can’t afford to take those kind of penalties that cost us entire games.
Lemieux has a history of being in the penalty box. While playing with the Manitoba Moose in 2016-17, he accumulated 130 penalty minutes. Last year in Manitoba wasn’t any better, it only took him 51 games to rack up 170 penalty minutes. He also had a short stint with Winnipeg, taking another 21 minutes in 9 games.
Lemieux hasn’t been able to find the back of the net with the Jets yet, scoring zero points in nine games. His career NHL totals are 18 games played, one goal scored, and 48 PIM’s.
Brendan plays fairly gritty, just like his father Claude once did. Claude had a very long career, playing on seven different teams over his career. Claude collected a total of 1777 minutes in the box over his 1215 game career. He also had 786 total points.
Brendan Lemieux will be able to return to the Jets lineup in about a week against the Washington Capitals on November 14th.