The defining moment of this week came Tuesday night when big Zdeno Chara of the Boston Bruins hit Max Pacioretty of the Montreal Canadians into the partition between the 2 teams benches at the Bell Centre. Pacioretty was taken off the ice on a stretcher after several minutes of laying on the ice. Chara was given a 5 minute penalty for interference and a game misconduct. Pacioretty was later diagnosed with a severe concussion and a non-displaced fracture of the fourth cervical vertebra in his neck, but what surprised most people in the hockey world was the NHLs decision not to suspend or fine Chara for the incident. The next night Pavel Kubina of Tampa Bay elbowed Dave Bolland of Chicago in the head, giving Bolland a concussion and Kubina a 3 game suspension. The NHL has been under a lot of heat from these decisions as the have now made it more complicated than ever to determine what hits are illegal and which ones are allowed. In this blog post I'll voice my own opinion and you can give your own in the comments section bellow.
Though this is not written in the rule book, I believe that if you commit a penalty that results in an injury to an opposing player, especially an injury that is clearly proven and not a fake, the player should be suspended. Chara committed interference which doesn't always result in an injury but it is still a penalty. If Pacioretty hadn't gotten hurt on the play, Chara would have only spent 2 minutes in the penalty box. The referee only gave him extra minutes due to the severity of the injury. Kubina did exactly what the league wants eliminated from the game, a headshot to Bolland, and so he was suspended. However, I think the league needs to change it's focus from just headshots to all dangerous hits and collisions that occur during a game. Air Canada threatened to stop sponsoring the NHL if they cannot control the safety of the players as it puts a bad image on their business and many politicians and players have openly voiced their disapproval with the way the league is handling player injuries and they are right. They just haven't been consistent enough in their sentencing to change how the game is played and it is now being noticed. Hopefully all the GMs can agree on a better and more consistent way of controlling the amount of injuries in the game or else the league could find itself with more problems, including losing fans, players and sponsors. The league cannot afford to deal with those losses so they had better clean up their act fast.
That is my 2 cents on the issue and I really hope the league deals with this correctly. Even though I am a blogger, I am really just a fan and I would hate to see the game change for the worse to due the lack of control the league has on injuries. Mathieu Schneider made an interesting suggestion on Hockey Night in Canada last night. He said the league should bring back hooking and holding in order to slow the game down and maybe limit the amount of high speed collisions. I think that would be an interesting idea and it would probably take something as drastic as that to protect the players. I just hope Mr. Bettman realizes what needs robe done and fixes it, or else he will be hated amongst more hockey fans than ever before.
I am interested in seeing your own thoughts in the comments below and look forward to coming back next week to discuss the GM meetings in Florida.
No comments:
Post a Comment