NHL delivers another punishment Sunday after cross-checking incident involving Tyler Kleven and Jared McCann
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Bruce Raymond
Mar 8, 2026 (2:15 PM)
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Photo credit: Kevin Ng-Imagn Images
Tyler Kleven and the Ottawa Senators got hit with an NHL Player Safety fine for a Jared McCann cross-check, and it's the kind of noise a team hates.
The league dinged Kleven $4,166.67, the maximum allowable under the CBA, for the shove with the stick that caught McCann.
It's not a suspension, but it still lands like a warning label.
For Ottawa, that matters because Kleven has been living in real minutes, not sheltered ones, on a blue line that needs every steady shift.
Kleven is 24, and Ottawa took him in the 2020 draft, second round, 44th overall, betting his edge would come with growth.
The play happened in Ottawa's 7-4 win over Seattle on Saturday night, a game that already felt chaotic before discipline even entered the chat.
McCann is a power-play trigger for the Kraken, so any shot to his comfort zone is going to get noticed.
Ottawa can't afford to be trading momentum for penalties when the schedule tightens and every special-teams swing feels louder.
Tyler Kleven puts Ottawa Senators discipline under microscope
Sens fans have seen this movie before, and the mood is basically, «please don't hand free chances to teams on the man advantage.»
The frustrating part is Kleven's season has shown real progress with the puck, and his decision-making has mostly calmed down.
He has 1-10-11 in 53 games this season, which is honest production for a depth defender who's asked to survive hard matchups.
That's why this fine lands awkwardly, because it's not about skill, it's about restraint.
Cross-checks are the exact kind of «small» stuff that turns into big stuff when refs decide the standard is tight.
If Ottawa wants to keep its third pair clean, Kleven's job is simple: keep the battle hard, keep the stick down, and make the other team chase.
His cap hit sits at $1.6 million, and he's still tracking as an RFA down the road, so these moments shape how the front office sees the long game.
The next milestone is Ottawa's response in the next game, because the best apology in this league is a quiet, mistake-free night.
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