Gary Bettman announces his ruling on the Nazem Kadri suspension.

The National Hockey League's commissioner has ruled on the appeal put forward by Colorado Avalanche forward Nazem Kadri and his ruling is frankly unsurprising.

According to an official press release from the NHL itself, Bettman has opted to uphold Kadri's 8 game suspension for a hit that he delivered to veteran St. Louis Blues defenseman Justin Faulk during the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Kadri has a long history of stepping over the line when it comes to physical play during the Stanley Cup Playoffs and it was his status as a repeat offender that resulted in him receiving such a lengthy ban for what was a blow to the head of Faulk.

Given that suspensions are handed down by the NHL's own Department of Player Safety, I never believed even for a moment that Bettman would seriously consider reducing Kadri's suspension in the playoffs. The NHL has notoriously been extremely overprotective of its officials and executives and for Bettman to reduce or overturn the suspension would have effectively undermined the decision of the Department of Player Safety.

This however is not the end of the road for Kadri and in fact it sounds like Kadri is already moving towards the next step in the appeals process. Kadri will now make his appeal before a neutral arbitrator, which in this case will be Shyam Das, a move that I believe has a far better chance of seeing any kind of success than the appeal to the commissioner ever did. 

The problem now for Kadri and the Avalanche comes in the form of just how long this process will take. At the time of this writing there has been no date set for Kadri's appeal in front of the neutral arbitrator and he has already served out nearly half of his suspension having missed 3 playoff games with the Avalanche since the hit on Faulk. The Avalanche have two more games scheduled for this week, which would bring him to 5 games served should he not stand in front of the neutral arbitrator before that time, and by Thursday of next week he will have served his entire suspension assuming the series between the Golden Knights and the Avalanche has not come to a conclusion by that point.