Mantha's Boarding Major Knocks Matinpalo Out as Ottawa's Blue-Line Crisis Deepens

The hit was not the end of the play anyone will remember from Monday night in Newark; the empty space on Ottawa’s blue line is. Anthony Mantha drove Nikolas Matinpalo into the boards from behind in a scoreless first period, took a five-minute major for boarding, and stayed in the game, Sportsnet reports. Matinpalo, helped up by medical staff and taken straight down the tunnel, did not come back, Daily Faceoff reports. Ottawa won 4-1 anyway. What the Senators lost is harder to replace than the two points were to keep.

What happened on the hit?

A race for a loose puck that ended with the trailing player making the decision. Mantha chased Matinpalo toward the boards at the New Jersey blue line and pushed him from behind and down to the ice with just under ten minutes left in the first period, Sportsnet reports. Daily Faceoff reports Matinpalo was already losing his balance as he reached the puck in front of the Devils’ bench and went head-first into the boards. Players from both teams converged in a scrum while he stayed down, and after he got to his feet he left the ice and went directly to the dressing room.

That sequence, a defenceman arriving off balance with his numbers showing, is the exact profile the boarding rule exists for. The debate the clip starts is not whether it was a penalty. It is where the punishment stops.

What changed on Tuesday?

Two of the open questions got partial answers. On the medical side, Green ruled Matinpalo out of Tuesday’s home game against St. Louis and said he could return as early as Thursday against the New York Islanders, Sportsnet reports, with Jorian Donovan drawing into the lineup against the Blues. Green also said Sanderson and Zub are both close and expects them to play in the next couple of days, which would ease the four-man injury list this hit created. On the discipline side, nothing had moved by Tuesday afternoon: the Department of Player Safety had announced no hearing, fine or suspension for Mantha, Scouting The Refs reports, and the Devils were playing in Detroit on Tuesday night with Mantha available. Scouting The Refs also supplied the rulebook detail behind the missing ejection: under Rule 41.5, a game misconduct is automatic on a boarding major only when the injury is to the face or head, and Matinpalo’s was announced as an upper-body injury, so no automatic misconduct applied even though he went into the boards head first. The silence from Player Safety is not a verdict yet, but with each day it starts to read like one.

Why did a major not come with an ejection?

Because the officials kept the two decisions separate. SensShot reports Mantha was assessed the five-minute major and was not given a game misconduct, so he returned in the second period, and New Jersey killed the full major while allowing Ottawa two shots on it. A boarding major punishes the team for five minutes; it does not, by itself, remove the player.

Whether the league removes him for longer is a different process with a different checklist, and it is the same fork this desk has now seen three times in a week. Frank Nazar’s check on Bo Horvat brought a match penalty and then a two-game suspension, because a match penalty alleges deliberate intent. Evan Rodrigues, Mantha’s own team-mate, jabbed Marco Rossi in the throat area on Saturday and kept playing after his major was reviewed down and Player Safety settled for a maximum fine. Mantha’s case lands between those poles: a major that stood, an opponent who left injured, and no ejection to signal how the officials graded the intent.

Why does Ottawa feel this one more than most teams would?

Because Matinpalo is not a spare part going down; he is the fourth defenceman on the same list. SensShot’s accounting of the Senators’ blue line is stark: Jake Sanderson has been sidelined since midway through the first period of the season opener, Artem Zub has yet to play a game this season while healing from a knee injury, and depth defenceman Cam Crotty has been placed on injured reserve. Matinpalo had dressed for every one of Ottawa’s first six games, averaging 17:45 a night, Daily Faceoff reports, and he lasted 2:19 on Monday.

What remains is Thomas Chabot, Jordan Spence, Tyler Kleven, Carter Yakemchuk and rookie Hoyt Stanley holding a five-man rotation for a team that had won four of its first five. A club can survive a five-minute major. Surviving a month with one injury standing between it and an emergency call-up is a different problem, and it is the context Player Safety’s decision lands in, even though the standings damage is formally none of the department’s business.

What does Mantha’s own situation add to it?

Pressure, of a quieter kind. Mantha is 32, in the first season of a two-year deal with New Jersey, and he had yet to register a point in the Devils’ first four games while averaging 13:40 a night, Sportsnet reports. A scoreless power forward trying to establish himself on a new team is the classic profile for a hit thrown a half-second too hard, which explains the play without excusing it. Heavy notes he has never been suspended in the NHL, and that clean record is the strongest card his side holds if a hearing is called: the department’s scale for first-time offenders in this exact week topped out at Nazar’s two games, for a hit it judged deliberate.

The other recent Ottawa-adjacent precedent cuts the other way on severity grading. When Jeremy Lauzon’s hit on Oliver Ekman-Larsson drew no penalty at all and Ekman-Larsson practised a day later, the story ended quickly because the injured player recovered. Matinpalo did not finish the game, and an injury on the play is historically the single strongest predictor of supplemental discipline, stronger than the clip itself.

What happens next?

A short wait, then a phone call or a silence that is itself the answer. Player Safety typically announces hearings the day after a game, and the Devils’ schedule gives the department a clean window before the story is overtaken. If a hearing comes, the questions are the standard ones this desk has tracked through the wrong-man penalty that a hot mic reversed in Boston and the Rodrigues downgrade: what the first call was, what review made of it, and what the league’s second look adds. For Ottawa, the next news is medical rather than disciplinary: any word on Matinpalo’s timeline, and whether Sanderson’s or Zub’s return can be hurried without being rushed.

Update, October 20: the medical side has since resolved in stages. Matinpalo returned against Philadelphia on Saturday after a two-game absence, and no Player Safety hearing for Mantha was ever announced, which closes the disciplinary watch on this hit. Sanderson’s return is now set for Wednesday against Florida, but it arrives in the same week Ottawa loses its captain: Thomas Chabot is out one to two weeks, and Sanderson comes back on the night Brady Tkachuk returns to Ottawa.