So despite word leaking out earlier of what the suspension would actually be, the WCHA waited until around 4:40 on Thursday afternoon to officially announce that Brad Malone would be suspended one game for his hit on Denver's Jesse Martin.
I've already made my case, so I won't make it again, but you had a player severely injure another player with--despite anyone's personal opinions--a play that is clearly defined as illegal, in multiple ways, by the rulebook and the only action the WCHA took was basically to bump the penalty up from a game misconduct to a game disqualification. For those hoping the WCHA would send a message about player safety, well, I think they did send a message about how seriously they take player safety.
Regardless of opinions on the actual decision, I think it's clear that once again, the WCHA chose to handle this about as poorly as they could. As I said, the announcement came out slightly before 5pm on Thursday afternoon. When you consider that they weren't going to announce the suspension the day of the game, that was literally about as late as they could have announced it. The announcement of the suspension was the top story on the league website, for a while, but was quickly buried as the third story by the end of the evening. The top story, by the way, is the This Week in the WCHA radio show, which finds time to talk about Zach Budish falling off his moped, but makes absolutely no mention of Jesse Martin. Maybe it wasn't their intention, but it certainly seems like the league tried their best to bury this story out of sight, rather than taking action and dealing with a serious problem in the game.