The shit appears to be hitting the fan in Nottingham with a rumour that the Panthers have been playing most of the season with one to many imports.

Stories broke on the icehockeyleague.tv website with Dave Simms doing his weekly round-up and breaking the story.  It appears Ellis registered himself for the Continental Cup but then failed to de-register leaving the Panthers with an illegal amount of imports.  Now the arguments are going to rise in a big way between the league, Nottingham, other teams and the fans about whose to blame and what’s going to happen next.  If you watch the Dave Simms review he covers a lot of the points and looks at all possible angles of argument but make no mistake, as he says, this one will run.

One of the big talking points is what’s the punishment’s going to be.  Most think it’s going to be one of two things, (a) A fine of some sort or (b) Points deductions.

Unfortunately with (a) we have a league where teams operate on very tight budgets that mean the difference between survival and failure.  Any kind of realistic fine for a team is going to hit a team hard and cause all sorts of problems.  With regards to (b) you deduct points, but would enough be deducted to make playoff qualification a struggle for them between now and the end of the season.  The Panthers are 14 points clear of 7th place Edinburgh.

Still, there’s always a (c) option and this is what I suggest:

If and it’s a big if, the Panthers are found guilty then make them play the following season with one less import slot than everyone else.  It would certainly make things tougher on them.

Then again, is a tough punishment such as (c) or even the ones (a) or (b) could serve up applicable in this case.  It’s not like they physically iced an extra import all year and it’s certainly not as bad as breaking the wage cap (though the Panthers are always quick to point the finger with regards to this one).  As said above, this one will run and run and everyone will have an opinion.  No doubt I’ll post again with regards to this as more evidence becomes public.  We’ll watch with great interest.

Category: Elite League » |

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