As posted earlier, Justin Johnson was hoping the AHL would see things his way when it looked at that fifth instigator from Saturday night.
It did not. The league handed Johnson a six-game suspension this afternoon. Three are for the accumulation of instigators. The other three are for leaving the bench on a legal line change to start an altercation.
When the dust clears, Johnson will have been suspended for 10 out of 11 games. He’s eligible to come back Jan. 24 at Lewiston against Portland, missing two Hartford games along the way.
Six games matches the second-longest one-shot suspension ever for a Sound Tiger, though really it comes in two parts. Kip Brennan got those 15 games back in 2008 for slugging Portland’s Geoff Peters in that fracas in Bridgeport. Brandon DeFazio got six games last season for leaving the bench in Hartford to fight Brandon Segal after a hit on Matt Donovan that the Sound Tigers didn’t like.
Pascal Morency got a total of six games for a fight with Brodie Dupont; like Johnson’s last suspension, it was at first just a one-game automatic suspension (Morency’s for an instigator in the last five minutes, Johnson’s for accumulation of three instigators) that became more on review (Johnson’s additional instigator and additional one game on top of that; Morency’s leaving the bench to instigate).