New Jersey Devils: Miles Wood Deserved His Suspension

New Jersey Devils forward Miles Wood was forced to sit for two games after a huge hit against the Tampa Bay Lightning. He should take his suspension and learn from it in the future.

The New Jersey Devils were forced to play without one of their best offensive players of the season thanks to a big hit in a major win. Miles Wood missed Sunday’s game against the Carolina Hurricanes and will miss Tuesday’s game against the Columbus Blue Jackets.

As much as we hate losing Wood from the lineup, it’s hard to say he didn’t deserve it.

Wood absolutely demolished Vladislav Namestnikov in the second period of the game. Then, immediately after, Wood punched through Andrej Sustr’s visor, causing him to bleed pretty badly.

I was personally in the arena at the time, and I thought Wood could be gone for a major penalty or worse. After finally seeing the hit itself, I could see why that would be worthy of a suspension.

Wood does everything wrong on this hit. He left his feet, which is one thing you never want to do when looking to make clean hits. You have to stay on the ice in order to keep yourself out of the box. The NHL Department of Player Safety had no choice but to sit the 21 year old.

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Secondly, Wood was staring at his numbers. We’ve learned the hard way thanks to the biggest penalty in franchise history that you cannot hit players from behind.

Honestly, the Devils are lucky with how this play turned out. Wood was given two minor penalties, but the referees gave Andrej Sustr a penalty for roughing, which counteracted Wood’s second penalty.

Wood ended up coming out of the box, and scoring the game-winning goal in the third period.

Honestly, for how many bad calls that have gone against the Devils, fans have to understand the issues with this play. Wood needs to learn from his mistake, because he proved how important he is to this team just minutes after the penalty. Only Taylor Hall has more goals this season than Wood. That shows he needs to tone it down just a smidge on the hits in order to stay on the ice.