Dennis Wideman received good news – of a sort – Friday.
Forty-four days after the Calgary Flames' defenceman ran over linesman Don Henderson during a game against the Nashville Predators; 37 days after receiving a 20-game suspension for the offence from NHL senior vice-president of hockey operations Colin Campbell; and 23 days since that suspension was upheld by commissioner Gary Bettman, Wideman had his sentence cut in half by James Oldham, an independent third-party arbitrator.
In slicing Wideman's suspension to 10 games from 20, Oldham began by arguing Bettman's basic premise was correct – Wideman's contact with Henderson constituted physical abuse of an official and thus warranted supplementary discipline.
However, Oldham said he "fundamentally" disagreed with Bettman's final conclusion – that Wideman's actions warranted the full 20-game suspension permitted under Rule 40 of the collective bargaining agreement, which deals with abuse of officials. Instead Oldham believed a lesser penalty available to Bettman was more appropriate – a 10-game suspension, under Rule 40.3 – on the grounds that there was no clear evidence Wideman deliberately tried to injure Henderson on the play.
When the verdict was announced, Wideman had already served 19 games on the sidelines. He was immediately eligible to return to the Flames' lineup, although that was of little solace, since he would have been back for Monday's game against the St. Louis Blues, no matter how the matter was resolved.
Publicly, neither the NHL nor the NHLPA were particularly thrilled by the resolution of the matter. The NHL sounded like sore losers in its official statement, "strenuously disagreeing with the arbitrator's ruling and reviewing the opinion in detail to determine what next steps may be appropriate."
But in the meantime, Wideman was reinstated immediately.
The players association, meanwhile, said it "felt strongly that there should have been no discipline" and suggested that its original defence – "that Dennis suffered a concussion mere seconds prior to his collision with linesman Don Henderson" – was "indisputable."
So Wideman gets half of the $564,516.20 (U.S.) he lost in salary returned to him and gets to play one game sooner than he would have had Bettman's original sentence been upheld.
Among the matters Oldham covered in his decision was news that Wideman's widely circulated text – blaming "stupid media and stupid referees" for him being in trouble in the first place – was part of a dialogue with several players.
It was a messy situation at the start and messy at the end, too, with just about everyone involved taking offence at some step along the way. Some wanted Oldham's decision rendered in more timely fashion, but he was under no obligation to do anything but provide a meticulous considered review of the facts and when he was ready, issue a verdict. To that end, he scheduled two days for the hearing, Feb. 25 and 26, and then set another day aside – March 4 – for post-hearing briefs, so everybody could have their say.
All along, this appeal was viewed as a test case – of Bettman's role in supplementary discipline matters – and it will be interesting to see if there's any interest on either side in tweaking this process, so if it happens again, it can be moved along more expeditiously.
For Wideman, the pawn in all this, the final month is a critical time to re-establish his credentials as a top-four NHL defenceman. He is completing the fourth year of a five-year contract he signed with Calgary in the summer of 2012 and last year, finished with the fourth-highest points total of any NHL defenceman, playing critical minutes for a Flames' team that unexpectedly made the playoffs.
But at $5.25-million, Wideman is expensive and at 32 – he turns 33 later this month – he is getting up in years. With no hope of qualifying for the playoffs, the Flames may want to continue testing defensive prospects as the season winds down.
However these final games play out, Wideman needs to show he's still a capable player, and also that he's able to get along with the officials, after such a contentious and much-publicized incident.
In short, Wideman needs to chart a careful path here. His future – short and long term – will depend upon it.