The 2024-25 season hasn’t gone exactly to plan for Jeff Skinner.
With hopes of landing in the Oilers top-six, he’s found himself on the outside looking in more often than not this season, with his most common linemate being Adam Henrique. He’s got four goals and as many assists in 24 games, but has fired the puck a ton, taking 65 and averaging 2.71 per game.
His season took another turn Monday, when the NHL announced a $2,000 fine for embellishment that occurred during the Oilers game on November 23rd against the New York Rangers. It happened during the second period when he was holding the puck on the wall. Rangers defenceman K’Andre Miller was shadowing him and when Miller’s stick was near Skinner’s side, he fell to the ice.
This is the second time this season Skinner has been flagged by the league, having received a warning from the NHL’s Hockey Operations for an incident on Oct. 22 against the Carolina Hurricanes.
“NHL Rule 64 (diving/embellishment) is designed to bring attention to and more seriously penalize players (and teams) who repeatedly dive and embellish in an attempt to draw penalties,” the league said in a statement.
“Citations are issued by the National Hockey League Hockey Operations Department, which tracks all games, logs all penalties for diving or embellishment, and flags all plays not called on the ice that in its opinion were deserving of such a penalty. A Citation is issued once Hockey Operations, through its internal deliberations, is convinced that a player warrants sanction.”
A warning is issued first, but for repeat incidents there’s an escalating scale of fines, as seen below.
|
Citation # |
Player Fine(s) |
* Head Coach Fine(s) |
|
1 |
Warning |
N/A |
|
2 |
$2,000 |
N/A |
|
3 |
$3,000 |
N/A |
|
4 |
$4,000 |
N/A |
|
5 |
$5,000 |
$2,000 |
|
6 |
$5,000 |
$3,000 |
|
7 |
$5,000 |
$4,000 |
|
8 |
$5,000 |
$5,000 |
