Gabriel Landeskog‘s complaint about referees calling tripping and embellishment on the same play struck a nerve across the hockey world this week. One of the people who agreed was his longtime teammate Erik Johnson, and the former NHL defenseman came with a concrete proposal attached.
The NHL already punishes embellishment financially. Under Rule 64, players who repeatedly dive to draw penalties are fined on a graduated scale, with a first citation drawing a warning and a second costing $2,000.
Erik Johnson’s proposal
Johnson’s view is that those numbers are nowhere near high enough to change anyone’s behavior.
“Embellishment is getting so bad. Significant fines ($25,000+) need to be implemented to get this out of our game,” Johnson wrote on X. “Taking money out of players’ pockets is the only way to stop this.”
That figure would represent a dramatic escalation, more than twelve times what the league currently hands out. The money from those fines goes to the NHL players’ emergency assistance fund.
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Johnson was responding to Landeskog’s answer in ESPN’s annual superstar player poll, where the Colorado Avalanche captain said the double call is the thing in hockey that frustrates him most.
“It’s really like it just has to be one or the other. I think that’s common sense,” Landeskog said in the poll. “If you’re giving out a penalty, just pick one. Which one was worse? Was the dive worse or was the tripping worse?”
The two know each other about as well as any pair of former teammates can. Johnson arrived in Colorado via trade in February 2011, months before the Avalanche drafted Landeskog second overall, and the two spent more than a decade together in Denver before winning the Stanley Cup in 2022. Landeskog’s children have referred to Johnson as “Uncle EJ.”
Johnson, the first overall pick in the 2006 draft, went on to play for the St. Louis Blues, Avalanche, Buffalo Sabres and Philadelphia Flyers across his NHL career.
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