Slava Voynov has been suspended indefinitely by the NHL after details surfaced regarding his arrest on charges of domestic abuse. TMZ reports that Voynov accompanied the woman to the hospital where staffers then reported him to the authorities. Details regarding the severity of the woman’s injuries haven’t been released, but they were apparently bad enough to warrant a trip to the hospital.
Take the TMZ report with a grain of salt, but this sounds like an ugly situation. The NHL wasted no time in suspending Voynov and the Kings quickly released a statement.
Here’s the mugshot:
Booking mug of Slava Voynov from #RedondoBeach pic.twitter.com/D4rgstSq3T
— Larry Altman (@LarryAltman) October 20, 2014
The Kings’ statement, via the NHL:
These developments are of great concern to our organization. We support the NHL’s decision to suspend Slava Voynov indefinitely during this process, and we will continue to take appropriate action as the legal proceedings and the investigation by the NHL take their course.
Prior to the start of the season, Gary Bettman commented on the league’s stance on domestic violence and off-ice issues, via ESPN:
“We as a league have more than enough authority and mechanisms to punish, if necessary, in the appropriate case. Fortunately we haven’t seen too many. But more importantly we focus on counseling and education, and in the joint programs we have with the Players’ Association we’ve been counseling and educating on domestic violence for more than a decade, I don’t remember the exact date. The security department does it in their annual meetings with each team, and the behavioral counselors from the substance abuse, behavioral health program also counsel and educate the players on those and many other issues.
So I’m not sure for us there is any need for any code of conduct other than our players, who overwhelming conduct themselves magnificently off the ice — we deal with it on a case by case basis. I don’t think we need to formalize anything more. Our players know what’s right and wrong, and as I said, we have the mechanisms in place to hopefully not get to that point.”
Bettman’s comments were made following all of the issues in the NFL, but now they will be placed under a microscope after the Voynov arrest.
Stay tuned. More details should be released soon. For now, Voynov won’t be participating in any hockey activities with the Kings, but will still collect a paycheck during the NHL’s investigation.
