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Will the NHL publicize divers?

Tomas Fleischmann, Kevan Miller

Tomas Fleischmann, Kevan Miller

AP

Interesting tidbit here from the New York Daily News, pertaining to last week’s news that the NHL is cracking down on embellishment:

[Bill] Daly, the NHL’s deputy commissioner, told the Daily News via email on Friday that the NHL’s new fines for players and coaches for excessive diving will be determined after each game by video review, regardless of the call on the ice.

In other words, just because a player isn’t called for embellishment in a game doesn’t mean the league can’t charge him for it later.

The NHL hasn’t determined whether it will publicize its decisions, Daly said.

Last Thursday, the NHL announced a revamped disciplinary process for diving that included an escalating scale of fines for repeat offenders -- and their coaches:

Dives

It’ll be very curious to see if this goes public.

There has been an appetite to identify -- or, let’s be real, shame -- divers in the past. Prior to the lockout, several NHL players participating in the league’s Rules Summit expressed their desire to create a distributed list:

The players in the session, including Ottawa Senators center Jason Spezza, Vancouver Canucks defenseman Kevin Bieksa and Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman John-Michael Liles, led an impassioned discussion on enforcing the diving/embellishment rule (Rule 64.1), [Colin] Campbell told NHL.com. He said the players want to distribute a list of divers around the League so it can be posted in all 30 dressing rooms and be delivered to the on-ice officials.

“They want to get [the list] out there,” Campbell said. “They want the player to be caught, whether it’s on the ice by the referee or by us on video. They are all tired of diving. The object is to make them stop eventually and, by doing that, they can get it out there around the League, embarrass them. The referees will know it, too, so the divers don’t get the benefit of the doubt.”

Public release of said list never came to fruition, despite TSN’s Darren Dreger revealing that Ryan Kesler, Evgeni Malkin and Daniel Carcillo were three of the players identified as “repeat offenders.”

Update: Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman confirms the league’s reservations about making diving punishments public...

The first example the NHL showed in its diving video was Tomas Plekanec’s head-snap in the Eastern Conference Final. The league wasn’t so sure about publicly naming those warned or fined, but the players pressed for it. Montreal’s centre is going to be closely watched at the start of the season.

Related: To ‘attack’ embellishment, NHL wants to ‘bring alive’ old rule