Columbus Blue Jackets forward Mathieu Olivier has been fined $5,000 for his slash on Florida Panthers defenceman Uvis Balinskis in Tuesday’s 7-3 loss.
Olivier received a five-minute major and game misconduct in the second period for the incident. He reacted to a board battle with Balinskis by striking the Panther between the legs while his back was turned.
Olivier, 29, took accountability for the penalty postgame and said he apologized to his teammates.
“I can sit here and try to rationalize it all I want with you. I don’t even have an explanation for it. It looked bad. It was bad and that’s on me,” he said.
“I apologize to my teammates for putting them in that spot and it’s happened a couple times this year. It’s usually not what I do, but it’s been happening, so I need to look in the mirror and figure it out. That’s all on me.”
Columbus was down 3-1 at the time of the penalty, with the game slipping away as the Panthers increased their lead to 4-1 with the man advantage.
Blue Jackets head coach Rick Bowness ripped into his team’s performance after the defeat.
“You have to hope, you got to believe that performance tonight will embarrass them enough to stop this, right? Because if they’re not embarrassed by that, we don’t want them on the team. It’s as simple as that,” said Bowness.
Bowness went on to say a lot of the problems during Tuesday’s loss were “self-inflicted” and seemed hopeful they could be fixed.
“We can fix them. We can. I know it looks bad. I believe in what we’re doing, I believe in them and I believe we can fix the problems,” explained Bowness. “That all being said, if that doesn’t get their attention then they’re on the wrong team. It’s a simple as that.”
The Blue Jackets dropped to 2-3-0 on the season with the loss.