Wild’s Ryan Hartman denies admitting to Jets’ Cole Perfetti that high stick was payback

Earlier this week, the Winnipeg Jets’ Cole Perfetti spoke out about the high stick he took from Minnesota Wild center Ryan Hartman during a faceoff in a game last Sunday, claiming Hartman admitted it “had to happen” as payback for a hit Winnipeg’s Brenden Dillon put on Minnesota’s star left winger Kirill Kaprizov earlier in the game, injuring Kaprizov.

Hartman was fined $4,427.08 for the play but Perfetti’s claims had no bearing on the decision. Even though the players were mic’d up and the audio of the incident was captured, it was not admissible in any disciplinary decision from the NHL Department of Player Safety. In exchange for wearing mics in the first place, the NHL Players Association had collectively bargained that the audio can not be made public or used by the DOPS in such scenarios.

Later this week, in an exclusive interview with The Athletic’s Michael Russo, Hartman clapped back with his own side of the story.

“It’s written on the wall that he’s wearing a mic,” Hartman told The Athletic.  “I know he’s wearing a mic all game. He comes up to me multiple times and asks me if I did it on purpose. And finally, all I told him was, ‘I’m not gonna say it wasn’t on purpose.’

“So I didn’t tell him, ‘Hey, I did that on purpose.’ He kept coming up to me, and I finally said, ‘I’m not gonna say it wasn’t on purpose.’ That was the extent of it.”

According to Russo’s story, a Wild official who watched the video of the incident with the audio echoed what Hartman described. It isn’t known if the Jets had access to additional clips, however.

Hartman, 29, has been fined seven times and suspended three times in his NHL career, which spans 10 seasons across stints with the Chicago Blackhawks, Nashville Predators and Wild.