Washington’s Evgeny Kuznetsov is the second player to be fined for diving/embellishment this season.
Kuznetsov was issued a warning following an incident flagged during a game against the Florida Panthers on Oct. 20. His dive failed to draw a penalty in that game but was caught after the fact by NHL Hockey Operations.
He was busted again on December 29th for diving to try to draw an interference call on New Jersey’s Sam Bennett at 18:32 of the second period in a game against the Devils. That second citation resulted in a $2,000 fine. Once again, no diving call was made in the game, nor was a penalty drawn through Kuznetsov’s attempt.
As a reminder, here’s the scale of fines issues to those found guilty of diving/embellishment.
While $2,000 isn’t much of a hit for a guy making $3.4 million this season, the public notice might be working. This time last season, we had six convicted divers. So far in 2016-17, we’ve had only two.
Keep tabs on the NHL’s convicted divers with our Diving/Embellishment tracker
