NHL Insider Believes the League Missed the Boat on Controversial Incident Involving Sam Bennett

As expected the main talking point nearly 24 hours later is not about the Toronto Maple Leafs jumping to a 1-0 lead but it's the elbow to the head from Sam Bennett against goaltender Anthony Stolarz that left the goaltender woozy and concussed.

Based on how the NHL playoffs have been officiated and disciplined, you knew the Department of Player Safety was going to get involved in some manner today and it sounds like they've officially made their verdict on whether or not there would be any supplemental discipline.

Unfortunately for Stolarz and the Maple Leafs, there's no retribution as the NHL deemed nothing would come out of last night's game, as reported by Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman. The top insider believes that the NHL should better protect their goaltenders and the fact that no penalty or punishments were given out is a huge miss from the league.

It's interesting as well because earlier in the post-season, Nick Cousins and the Ottawa Senators were both fined when the former shot a couple of pucks towards Stolarz during pre-game warm-ups. However, what looked to be a blatant elbow to the back of the head that led to a serious injury led to nothing, not even a fine.

Panthers head coach Paul Maurice has made headlines this playoffs as well for his comments about how his players only hit those who have the puck, which was a dig at the Tampa Bay Lightning head coach Jon Cooper after Brandon Hagel's thunderous hit on Aleksander Barkov.

Since then the Panthers have ironically done the complete opposite with questionable call after questionable call going unnoticed with the exception of Aaron Ekbad's 2-game suspension for elbowing Hagel in Game 4.

Expect a level of animosity, tension, and feistiness that we've yet to see in these playoffs come Game 2 when both teams reconvene at the Scotiabank Arena. Ekblad will also be making his return so both teams will have their full complement of skaters ready to do battle.