His teammates call him WiFi, a nickname he has never much liked. On Saturday night he earned it.
Arber Xhekaj sat in the penalty box at the Bell Centre, pulled out a phone, and watched his younger brother Florian drop the gloves with Marshall Rifai — in a different game, in a different city, at the same time. Montreal was playing Toronto twice that night, split-squad, one game in each building.
The clip travelled, and the question attached to it travelled too: is the NHL going to fine him for that?
So we went and looked it up. The answer is no, and the reason is more interesting than the clip.
Do the NHL rules ban phones in the penalty box?
No. The league’s official 2025-26 rulebook does not mention cell phones, electronic devices or personal communication equipment anywhere in connection with players.
The one rule that touches communication at all is Rule 15.1, and it is about something else entirely. It says that a player or coach ejected from a game “must vacate the players’ bench area and may not, in any manner, further participate in the game”, and that this “includes directing the team from the spectator area or by radio communications”. That is a rule against coaching from exile. It has nothing to say about a defenceman watching his brother throw hands.
There is no penalty-box phone rule because, until now, nobody needed one.
The one policy that comes close
One, and it is a stretch.
When the NHL introduced its social media policy in 2011, it imposed what The Globe and Mail described at the time as a “blackout for players from two hours before game-time to the finish of their media interviews following the game”. Break that and the league can discipline you.
But Xhekaj was not posting. He was watching. A blackout on social media use does not obviously cover a player watching a broadcast of his own organization’s other game, and the league has never tested it in public.
Beyond that, it is a team matter. Clubs set their own rules about phones at the rink, and Montreal has said nothing about this one.
No player has ever been fined for this
Not that we can find. The NHL has never disciplined a player for phone use during a game.
The closest comparison is from another sport: in 2019, the Philadelphia 76ers fined Amir Johnson for using a phone on the bench during a playoff game. His own team, not the league, imposed that fine.
