Ducks’ Jacques to serve suspension, miss game against the Kings
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Ducks forward J.F. Jacques served an automatic one-game suspension Sunday for instigating a fight in the last five minutes of the Ducks’ 4-1 exhibition victory at Vancouver on Saturday.
Although the NHL rule book stipulates that the player’s coach shall be fined $10,000 in such cases, Randy Carlyle said before the Ducks faced the Kings at Staples Center he had not heard from the league regarding a fine.
Jacques came onto the ice for a line change and headed straight to Vancouver’s Mike Duco and started a fight. Carlyle was, um, not pleased.
“It’s hard to defend. You can’t defend what he did,” Carlyle said. “He went across the ice and went after a guy, and it’s kind of like you’re at a loss for words when it’s happening. You’re shaking your head. But what can you do?”
Carlyle said he had been holding out his top players because he didn’t want to run up the score against the Canucks, who had deployed an overwhelmingly inexperienced lineup. “And then this kind of thing happens,” Carlyle said.
“He didn’t really have a reason. He didn’t know why he did it. He just said, ‘I did it and I shouldn’t have done it.’
“I just told him, tell the truth. That’s all you can do. There’s no masking what happened. I’m sure he’s not proud of it and we’re not proud of it as an organization.”
The Ducks didn’t play their top line of Bobby Ryan, Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry on Sunday and also left winger Teemu Selanne and goaltender Jonas Hiller out of their lineup.
Before the game, the Ducks cut their roster to 37 by assigning five players to Syracuse of the American Hockey League and returning Long Beach’s Emerson Etem to his junior team, Medicine Hat of the Western Hockey League. Sent to Syracuse were center Mark Bell, defenseman Mathieu Carle, right wing Matt Kennedy, defenseman Jake Newton and center Rick Schofield.
[Updated at 9:10 p.m.: The Kings had their second round of cuts before Sunday’s game, sending eight players to their minor league affiliate in Manchester of the American Hockey League, and teenaged center Tyler Toffoli was reassigned to his junior team, the Ottawa 67’s.
Toffoli, 19, was a second-round pick by the Kings (47th overall) in the 2010 draft. and had an impressive showing in the Kings’ split-squad game at Phoenix on Wednesday.
Those going to Manchester: defensemen Nicolas Deslauriers, David Kolomatis and Patrick Mullen; forwards Andy Andreoff, Brandon Kozun, Ray Kaunisto and Linden Vey; and goalie Martin Jones.
This reduces the number of players to 44 in training camp.]
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-- Helene Elliott and Lisa Dillman
