No hearing for Tom Wilson, so the Panthers have to answer it

Tom Wilson drove Sandis Vilmanis head-first into the glass from behind, and the league looked at it and decided five minutes was the bill. I think that's wrong. I also think it's the second-most annoying thing about Saturday, because Florida had those five minutes and a whole afternoon to make Washington pay, and didn't.

Elliotte Friedman had it Sunday morning: no supplemental discipline. So that's the ruling. Wilson walks, Vilmanis gets looked at by the medical staff back in Florida, and the cats are in Boston for a 1 p.m. puck drop with two forwards short.

What happened in Washington

The hit came at 8:55 of the first period. Vilmanis had just played the puck on the wall, Wilson finished through his numbers, and the kid went into the dasher where the glass starts. Wilson got a boarding major and a game misconduct.

Vilmanis was helped off and didn't come back. The team calls it an upper-body injury, and Maurice said they won't know how bad until he's seen by the medical staff in Florida.

Maurice didn't take the bait afterward. "I'll leave that to the Department of Player Safety," he said. "That's their job."

Spencer Carbery had the other side of it: "normally nine times out of ten that's no big deal, and nothing happens." That's the case for no hearing. Vilmanis spun on the wall, Wilson was already committed, and the league bought it.

Pabs' verdict on the no-call

I play this game. When a guy turns his back to you on the wall, you have a choice, and you get maybe half a second to make it. Wilson has been suspended six times in his career, including seven games in 2021 for boarding Brandon Carlo. He knows where the numbers are better than anybody in the league.

A turn by the victim doesn't make it clean. It makes it harder to judge, and the league picked the easy answer. It was a major, a misconduct and a 22-year-old helped off the ice in the first period, and the price stopped at the penalty box door.

The part that's on us

Here's where I grade the cats straight. Brady Tkachuk scored on the major at 10:00 for a 2-1 lead. That was the last time Florida led. They went 1-for-5 on the power play and lost 4-3.

That's a power play running at 23.7 percent on the season, per NHL data, and it went quiet on the two minors it got in the third, down two. You want to answer a hit like that, you answer it on the scoreboard.

The Ferda number is the one that stings. Vilmanis had five points in his two games before Saturday, four of them against Chicago, by our count. On Saturday he got barely two minutes of ice time before the hit ended his afternoon.

Lineup watch:

Vilmanis is out today. Anton Lundell, day-to-day, is out too. The projected top line has Sam Bennett between the Tkachuks, and a call-up from Charlotte was on the table before the game.

That leaves Maurice leaning on the top guys again, on a back-to-back, in Boston. Matthew Tkachuk played 23:55 on Saturday and Sam Reinhart 24:45.

Pabs' read: the league won't hand the cats anything for Vilmanis, so they take it from the Bruins this afternoon. Score on the power play, finish your checks clean, and bring him home a win.