01-23-2020, 07:55 PMnykonax Wrote:

01-23-2020, 07:54 PMVelevra Wrote: I generally stay out of these 99.9 % of the time… I’m not going to comment on what I think an appropriate ruling should be due to my inherent biases. But as someone who is a former SMJHL Head Commissioner, former SHL Advisor (Head Office Member), and current IIHF Commissioner, I do want to voice serious concern in regards to how this has been handled.

It took me a decent amount of time to go through the evidence laid out by the SMJHL HO as well as the extensive appeal made by BDonini which is several pages long to fully grasp the situation. After doing this, I have two large concerns regarding the process utilized by the SMJHL HO. 

1) Reaching a verdict without talking to all parties involved: For me it is hard to fathom that an initial ruling was made without reaching out to all parties involved for information. Imagine a judge rendering a verdict on a case before the defendant has had a chance to present their evidence.

2) Time before a decision was made both initially and on the appeal: The SMJHL HO says that the initial decision was made in “10-12 hours”. The time between BDonini’s appeal and the SMJHL HO’s response was less than 12 hours (I imagine many of these hours were probably spent sleeping for North American members of the HO). Like I said, it took me a good amount of time to read through all the information available. It is hard for me to fathom that a good review of BDonini’s appeal was done by all members of the SMJHL HO within this time period, let alone a productive discussion on the points he raised.

I sincerely hope that going forward, these issues can be rectified for any future punishment situations that may arise.

Yeah I don't know how HO made a good decision when they were discussing this appeal in either the late night or early morning

I make all my best decisions at night, especially when horny