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Hold your applause for NHL

The league, influenced by the NFL's mishandling of Ray Rice, suspended a player arrested on suspicion of domestic abuse.

Kings defenseman Slava Voynov. (Redondo Beach Police Department/AP)
Kings defenseman Slava Voynov. (Redondo Beach Police Department/AP)Read more

JUST 2 DAYS after CBSSports.com reported that Ray Rice could be reinstated to the NFL within a month, the NHL made it clear to everyone that it will not be the next league dragged through the slush over its handling of domestic-abuse cases involving its players.

But please . . . hold your applause.

Los Angeles Kings defenseman Slava Voynov doesn't have his mug on a video-game box or his jersey all over the backs of kids and adults nationwide. There's no wing of his memorabilia on display at his alma mater. He's had his name on a Stanley Cup twice, yes, and, only 24, he played a big part in those championships.

But the NHL wasn't facing the same kind of PR nightmare that triggered Roger Goodell's initial unenlightened, two-game suspension of Rice for beating his then-fiancée in an Atlantic City elevator in February. Voynov is no well-known star. Fans, even his own, would have trouble picking him out of, well, a police lineup.

There was no weighing of options here, no alternate course. The look-the-other-way strategy once employed by our professional sports leagues has been forever exorcised, thanks to the public humiliation heaped upon Goodell and the owners he answers to during their long summer of incompetency and insensitivity.

Goodell's initial suspension of Rice enraged abuse advocates. His Sergeant Schultz act after TMZ obtained and went public with that graphic hotel surveillance video ("I see nuuh-thing, I know nuuh-thing") left both his customers and advertising partners open-mouthed dumbfounded as we all tried to figure out how someone in charge of an industry earning $10 billion of annual revenue could be so clumsy and/or clueless.

And now the NFL finds itself in a self-inflicted state of limbo, as Rice and his attorneys seek reinstatement through an arbitration process likely to produce a resolution before the investigation initiated by the league submits its findings. Rice's legal team will argue that he did not lie to Goodell and that the video that effectively jettisoned him from the league was available to the NFL all along.

Regardless of how it all ends, the case has cast an ugly reflection on the NFL. And so, the NHL acted quickly, decisively, suspending Voynov indefinitely after his arrest on suspicion of domestic violence, citing Section 18-A.5 of the most recent collective bargaining agreement, which reads: "The league may suspend the player pending the league's formal review and disposition of the matter where the failure to suspend the player during this period would create a substantial risk of material harm to the legitimate interests and/or reputation of the league."

And the Kings, who still must pay the player his $4.1 million salary and have it count against the salary cap, issued a statement that read: "These developments are of great concern to our organization. We support the NHL's decision to suspend Slava Voynov indefinitely during this process, and we will continue to take appropriate action as the legal proceedings and the investigation by the NHL take their course."

Again, hold your applause.

Because those words were in place last October, when Colorado goaltender Semyon Varlamov was arrested on suspicion of felony kidnapping and assault against his girlfriend. He was not suspended by the NHL or the Avs, played through the investigation and traveled with the team.

According to the Denver Post, witnesses accounts changed as the investigation progressed, and prosecutors eventually declined to file kidnapping charges, citing a lack of evidence. When the Los Angeles Times asked NHL officials this week why Varlamov was not suspended while Voynov was, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly responded, via email, "Significantly different facts."

Maybe at the end, but it's hard to imagine how significantly different those "facts" could have been, hours after either player was arrested. Or how different it could have looked when Hermosa Beach police were first investigating sexual-assault allegations against another Kings defenseman, Drew Doughty, in 2012. Charges were not brought.

And the NHL's tolerance for such behavior is well-documented earlier than that. That doesn't make the NHL any worse than the other professional leagues. It just means that its actions this week are really nothing to applaud about.

A sigh of relief maybe, but that's it.

Because the significantly different "fact" about this case over the others is simply that there was a punitive response, a recognition, finally, that domestic abuse is so much more than just a private quibble. It's been a slow, painful march, but investigators and, most important, the court of public opinion, are not as quick to blame or implicate the victim in domestic-abuse cases.

Do so at your own reputation risk, as several players and one knuckleheaded TV analyst discovered during the Rice debate.

If nothing else, the Rice matter made those in charge of professional sports officials keenly aware that the sensitivities (and demographics) of their audience and, more important, their advertisers, have changed. And the NHL's quick response this week is the first strong evidence of that.

There, now you can applaud.