Penguins Prospect Andrey Pedan Suspended

Monday afternoons in AHL fandom usually consist of two things:

1. The weekly announcement of the AHL’s Player of the Week (this week awarded to Spencer Martin of San Antonio), and
2. The AHL’s suspension announcements stemming from the weekend’s games.

This week, four names popped up on the suspension report, with the longest suspension going to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton’s Andrey Pedan. Pedan received a three-game suspension, presumably for this hit on Jakub Zboril of Providence during Saturday’s 4-3 OT win.

Pedan jumps into the hit on Zboril, hitting him dangerously high and putting Zboril out of the game. Zboril didn’t play in Providence’s game on Sunday, either.

The hit was not penalized in-game, which was stunning to me. The only penalties stemming from that hit were matching fighting majors to Pedan and Providence’s Ken Agostino, who skated in to attempt to get Pedan to answer for the hit.

The three-game suspension puts Pedan out for this Friday’s game at Binghamton, as well as WBS’s games on November 22 against Lehigh Valley and November 24 at Syracuse.

I don’t anticipate WBS having to call up anyone from Wheeling to replace Pedan for those three games with Kevin Spinozzi still in WBS and Ethan Prow standing in admirably for Lukas Bengtsson on Sunday, unless Bengtsson’s absence proves to be more serious than a one-game absence. In that case, perhaps Wheeling will be called upon to bolster the WBS defense.