Tom Wilson is the Caps’ all-time leader in being suspended. (Caps Outsider)
After Tom Wilson was nailed with his fifth career suspension, we wondered about all the other suspensions in Caps history. The past decade has been well documented, but before that, we couldn’t find a comprehensive list, so we got to work.
First we combed through multiple newspaper archives to the Caps’ inaugural season in 1974. The earliest suspension we found was on September 9, 1975, when Mike Marson threw his stick at the Toronto Maple Leafs’ bench during a preseason game in London, Ont. He was suspended one game. The next incident we found was on Nov. 9, 1976 when Tony White was suspended five games for fighting with Vancouver’s Mike Walton. The newspaper clippings below provide more detail, but not every suspension got the same amount of attention.
We hunted down more suspensions – including ones not mentioned in the newspapers – by finding players with three or more game misconducts in a season, which is an automatic one-game suspension.
“One came for third instigator of season and it was a bogus call,” NBC Sports Washington analyst and former Cap Alan May told us recently about his Feb. 25, 1990 fight, which earned him one game. “Just a bad call on a rookie and he deserved it.”
For this list, we’re not including suspensions by the team. There are more of those than we care to track, including ones that involve beer in the hotel room, contract disputes, sleeping in late, and whatever Alexander Semin did. The Caps had three non-players get suspended by the league, which we included on this list just for reference.
We do not believe the list is complete, because some suspensions may have flown under the radar, but we will continue hunting down information and adding it. Please email us at [email protected] if you have any more information, corrections or clarifications. Check out the database here:
