What is the point of having a former enforcer be the head of the Department of Player Safety if said former enforcer is going to completely ignore the tenets of their own supposed “code”?

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here.

On Saturday evening, in the third period of the Vancouver Canucks’ third-last game of the 2024/25 season, Derek Forbort dropped the gloves with Yakov Trenin of the Minnesota Wild. The fight came in response to some overly-rough treatment of Quinn Hughes by Trenin, and at first it went exactly the way the Canucks would want it to.

Forbort got Trenin off-balance, gained control of the scrap, and landed a couple solid punches before the players tumbled to the ice. Forbort ended up on his back, and a linesman dove into the pile to formally break it up.

At which point Trenin steadied himself, regained his balance, and then reached underneath the linesman to land a hard final shot on the entirely prone Forbort.

The punch was immediately apparent as a brutal sucker-shot – so much so that Teddy Blueger jabbed Trenin with his stick from the bench, for which Blueger was eventually penalized. The officials conferred, and Trenin was ultimately handed two, five, and ten for being the “aggressor” in a fight (not to be confused with the “instigator,” but functionally identical as penalties). Forbort himself received a five-minute major for fighting, and Blueger got two for interference.

The Canucks were obviously not satisfied with an even-manpower situation resulting from all this, and they let both the officials and Trenin know as he was escorted from the ice. Trenin responded by attempting to break loose from the linesmen to do…who knows what, really, aside from looking silly.

The Canucks continued to let their feelings be known in the aftermath of the game. Marcus Pettersson called it “one of the dirtiest things I’ve ever seen,” and head coach Rick Tocchet concurred.

Even Forbort’s agent, Ben Hankinson, got into the action, doing his best Rodney Dangerfield and complaining that Trenin showed “no respect” with the “cheap shot.”

And these quotes all came before the full extent of the incident were known. But we know now that Forbort suffered a broken orbital bone from the punch, an injury that will not only end his season, but surely impact his ability to enjoy a full and fruitful offseason.

Which, all on it’s own, really sucks. Forbort has been an absolute warrior for the Canucks, especially in these final months of the season. He helped the penalty kill become the team’s best feature, he filled in admirably during Hughes’ absence from the lineup, and he played through visible injuries to his face and hand while somehow increasing the quality of his play along the way. Here he was, in an ultimately meaningless game for the Canucks, still sticking up for his captain – something the Canucks did not do enough of in the rest of 2024/25.

And what does he get for it? To start his offseason with a broken face, right on the cusp of another round of unrestricted free agency. That’s a costly sucker-punch, in more ways than one.

And to add insult to literal injury, we now know that Trenin will not be disciplined for his actions. No suspension; not even a fine. Not even a fine for the mishandling of the officials! Trenin will skate away from this night entirely devoid of consequences for his actions. He didn’t even put his team down a man, something that allowed them (in part) to tie the game and then win it in overtime.

That’s just not right.

Look, levelling criticism at George Parros and the Department of Player Safety isn’t going to win us any journalistic awards. It’s the exact opposite of breaking new ground.

But we do think there’s some grounds for a more specifically-pointed critique here, and it’s this. What Trenin did was a very clear violation of “the code.” And, sure, we realize that to many, talk of a “code” regulating actual fistfights sounds ludicrous. But it’s something that is baked into every aspect of hockey.

Slashing, for example, is illegal. And yet, players whack each other with their sticks a hundred times a game without penalty. It’s more accurate to say that slashing beyond a certain, only vaguely-defined threshold is illegal.

The same is definitely true of fighting. Players are allowed to drop their gloves and beat the heck out of each other without anything more than coincidental majors as a result – so long as they don’t cross any of those unwritten thresholds of combat. This is “the code,” and it definitely precludes the continued throwing of punches against a player who is prone on the ice.

There’s some necessary looseness to these rules to make exceptions for the heat of the moment. But if you watch the clip over again, you’ll likely agree that Trenin doesn’t really deserve the benefit of that particular doubt.

We’re no lawyers, but watch the way Trenin reaches down with his fist to steady himself, finds that balance point, and then takes his swing at Forbort, all the while holding Forbort down with his other hand. It may occur over the course of a few seconds, but that’s plenty of time in a sport as fast as hockey. Plenty of time for Trenin to decide not to punch the prone Forbort, at the very least.

Instead, Trenin very deliberately threw that punch. So, you’ve got a clear-cut breaking of the code, with plenty of evidence of intent and deliberation. The result? No disciplinary action.

Which brings us back to our opening statement. The whole ‘point,’ if you could call it that, of installing someone like Parros as the head of the DoPS was that – as a former distributor of violence at the NHL level – Parros would inherently understand these unwritten rules, and be able to apply a more hockey-unique brand of justice to on-ice incidents through that understanding.

Stuff like their failure to punish Jason Dickinson for the reckless hit that ended Filip Chytil’s season? That’s atrocious, but it’s almost expected at this point.

This flagrant flouting of ‘the code,’ on the other hand and in other words, was the exact sort of incident that Parros is supposed to be an expert at policing.

But apparently not.