Suspension

A suspension is a term used to describe when a person is not eligible to participate in an event (usually a certain number of games).

Players, coaches, team officials, and even referees and league officials can be suspended for a sanctioning body for a variety of reasons, such as:

1. not being properly registered to play in the league
2. failure to abide by league guidelines in terms of behavior or conduct outside of hockey (usualy legal issues such as impaired driving, drug use, gambling on games, domestic violence or other types of assault)
3. an act committed during a game such as attempting to injure and other player, officials, or fans.
4. Throwing a game (intentionally causing a team to lose, this usually involves gambling)
5. not paying a fine for a previous minor offense
6. cheating, doing something to gain an unfair advantage such as altering equipment, spying on another team
7. Using substances to gain an unfair advantage.
8. Criticizing game or league officials on the media or on social media if a league has a policy forbidding it.
9. Covering up events which occur by ignoring or not reporting it to league or sanctioning authorities. (such as hazing or underage drinking)
10. Being too old to play in a league, usually involves deceiving others about a players age, name such as using fake documents.  Usually involves junior level or lower players. Or even being too young to play in a league such as a 19 year old playing in a senior league game when the league has a policy of junior aged players being ineligible.
11. being blatantly biased when it comes to decisions (this involves game and league officials).

Sometimes doing a poor job officiating such as missing a blatantly cheap shot or obvious calls (such as offsides pucks going out of play, or goal/no goal calls) or misinterpreting rules can lead to game officials not being assigned to playoff assignments when not as many officials are needed.  This is usually not really a suspension but a merit system so that better officials are used for the later round games.

Many better organized leagues have a person that is in charge of discipline, such as the director of player safety in the National Hockey League who deals with supplemental discipline when a player commits an infraction in which they attempt to injure another player (such as a hit to the head with a fist, stick, or elbow) or just careless actions which result in injury such as boarding, checking from behind whether intentional or not.  Many suspensions or fines are given based on several factors such as the severity of the injury, the offending players track record (previous suspensions and fines), if the offense was intentional such as raising a shoulder or elbow to make the hit or how far away the player was when he skated towards the other player.

Some fines and suspensions are automatic such as leaving the bench to start a fight.