Highly controversial turn of events leads to veteran facing suspension for taking matters into his own hands

Once again, the NHL's officiating is the focal point of a lot of discussion on Tuesday evening and Wednesday afternoon as it has been announced that Arizona's Jason Zucker has a hearing scheduled with the Department of Player Safety after a retaliatory hit on Florida's Nick Cousins.

NHL officials have not done a good enough job of calling the rule book this season and holding players accountable for dirty, dangerous hits, which has led to a spike in players taking matters into their own hands of late. Case in point, here's Jason Zucker taking a run at Cousins after his dirty hit on Juuso Valimaki, and then immediately dropping the gloves with Florida's Gustav Forsling:





This is the second occurrence for Cousins over the last couple of weeks where he has laid a dirty hit on an unsuspecting defenseman, the last being his hit from behind on Erik Gudbranson on December 10th, which also caused their game to spiral out of control, resulting in fines and suspensions.

Much to the surprise of many, Cousins did not receive a hearing for his hit on a downed and vulnerable opponent in Valimaki. How many more times is Cousins going to get away with these types of plays?