Late in Friday’s game between Vancouver and San Jose, Canucks winger Antoine Roussel got involved in a scrum with Sharks defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic. Near the end of it, Roussel appeared to bite Vlasic and the league has completed its review, announcing (Twitter link) that the winger has been fined $5K, the maximum allowable in the CBA.
Roussel is no stranger to supplementary discipline having had a pair of incidents back in the 2014-15 season, one that resulted in a fine for roughing while the other yielded a two-game suspension for an illegal cross-check. However, despite his history, the league ruled that this particular incident didn’t reach the level of being worthy of a suspension.
This ruling is largely consistent with how they’ve viewed bites in recent years which have yielded either fines or have gone unpunished. The last suspension handed out for a biting incident was handed out back in 2009 when Senators winger Jarkko Ruutu was given a two-game ban for a bite on Sabres winger Andrew Peters.