Evgeny Kuznetsov Blasts Players Union for Not Sticking Up For Him

"We went in, sat down. Next to me sat these three c--ksuckers from the trade union. They told me they were gonna stick up for me. If Bettman says one word to us, we're gonna get involved and s--t. And then Bettman starts getting hot and heavy. He's going on and on and on and on and on. I'm sitting there, and I can't tell if he's serious or not. I apologized, said I came to you as a human being, alone, without an agent. Bettman said he respected that, thanked me. Sitting next to him was [Deputy Commissioner] Bill Daly. He said: 'I think you should be suspended for 20 games.' And I just started laughing. And those three people from the union don't say a word. I look at them, I don't understand, they should have stood up for me."

"Ideally, people from the union should have stood up, started some kind of dialogue, somehow take my side. But as it turned out, I listened for an hour to how s---ty I was. It was over, I got in a cab and called my agent. Told him about the 20-game suspension, he laughed too. But when I imagined that I would get such a punishment, I got kind of depressed. Then the agent calls and says: 'Can we do three games of disqualification?' Two games is not enough, it's better to have three'. I said that it wasn't up to me. In the end we agreed to give only three games instead of 20 games of suspension."