Today one of the most anticipated games of the entire National Hockey League season is taking place in Boston and not for any reason that is right, unless of course you are a blood thirsty Bruins fan, of which, to be fair, I would likely be one if I had also seen my team sinned against – not only by a Hockey player from an opposing line-up, but also by the NHL itself.

The pinstripes that run the game have had a nightmare month with cheap shop, late hit, blindside hit one after another leaving players injured, fans enraged and a disciplinary committee so confused that they are currently working out their arse from their elbow before proceeding. One bad hit warrants two games, another blindside shot is deemed clean and then, last night, a brutal assault warrants 8 games. It is almost as if they see an incident, get together, close the shades on the office windows, get drunk and then reach into a hat and pull out a number to decide the amount of games to suspend the player for. And in no instance does the number appear to sit well with anyone. How long must it go on before someone leaves the ice on a stretcher and ends up lying on a mortuary slab?

Tonight’s game has already resulted in a fight involving Matt Cooke – the man the entire city of Boston wants hung from the rafters of the arena, drawn behind the Bruins team bus and then quartered by Zdeno Chara. Cooke was the offending player who cut down Bruin’s star Marc Savard with a blindside hit last week leaving Savard in a darkened room for many days following the incident. See below.

Cooke somehow escaped a suspension only to find himself in the thick of tonight’s game. Rightfully, he stepped up to the plate tonight and took his share of fists to the face from Bruin’s enforcer Scott Thornton hence settling the score – or so we hope.

Last night it was the turn of James Wisniewski to be the NHL’s daily bad guy when he skated at a speed of about 30 mph before launching himself into the head of Blackhawks stud defenseman Brent Seabrook, sandwiching Seabrook’s head between the boards and his elbows. For a moment after the hit Seabrook stood still, almost like he had literally been plastered to the boards, before his eyes rolled back into his head and like some drunk who has finally had his last tipple, dropped onto his back, out for the count. Mayhem rightly ensued as everyone dropped the gloves and proceeded to hug one another while Seabrook came to his senses. For his handy work Wisniewski was suspended 8 games, though if it were up to me he’d be gone for the year. It was a filthy play.

Of course you’ll probably have noticed the hit that lead into the Wisniewski incident. Seabrook himself threw a questionable hit to Corey Perry but from my view it probably deserved nothing than a minor penalty, perhaps even a game misconduct if you really wanted to push the ball out. Seabrook caught Corey Perry as he was spinning around from making a pass and the hit threw him awkwardly into the boards. But it was certainly a hit that deserved Seabrook to be brought to task on … with a fight. Wisniewski, if he felt has team-mate had been unfairly treated should have dropped his mitts, skated up to Seabrook and started fighting – isn’t that why fighting is in the game, to allow the players to police such incidents? The great and the good of ‘old-time-hockey’ have said the reason Wisniewski didn’t start fighting was because of the instigator rule that would have seen Wisniewski thrown from the game for starting the fight. “In the old days, Bob Probert would have appeared on the scene and pounded the life out of that guy without repremand.” My counter argument to that is that we see good clean hits on a weekly basis in the NHL which are followed by a fight in which the guy throwing the good clean hit suddenly has to defend himself. Punishing the instigator extra is generally okay and it would have been fair had Wisniewski started a fight on this occasion, but what possessed Wisniewski to think that trying to put Seabrook into the fifth row of the stands was a better idea can only be answered by examining the inside to Wisniewski’s head? Instead of instigating a fight to defend a team-mate and perhaps getting a game misconduct, Wisniewski decided to run a defenseless player in a much more cowardly way and pick up the eight game suspension.

Dirty physical play has always been in the game, but in the age of television were numerous cameras are at every single arena – every single incident is picked up from many angles and in the age of multi-sports channels, you can be sure every incident will be scrutinized to the nth degree. It’s not good for the NHL, but they asked for this kind of television coverage and must now reap the benefits of the television coverage that has also brought with it the exposure of the games ugly side. Then again, it isn’t like this is the first season of television coverage, yet it does seem like there has been more questionable head-shots than in any season I can remember. It isn’t the eliminating of these kind of hits that matters though … for they are trying to do that as I type and head shots to unsuspecting, defenseless players, such as Marc Savard will not be accepted from next season on … but rather it is the punishment for throwing dirty hits or charging 60 feet down the ice to plant your elbows into an opponents skull that needs addressed. Until players and in bigger respects – teams – get properly punished they won’t feel the need to cut it out.

The NHL needs to take the ‘book’ and start throwing it around a little.

Suspend a player for 2 games and he’ll head home to the family for an extended holiday. Suspend him for four and he’ll hit the beach and perhaps feel bad about himself. Suspend him for ten or more – nobody will miss him – and it’ll make him and others think twice about making a filthy play. Would Wisniewski have done what he done had he known he would get 10+ games? He was shocked and somewhat upset that he even got 8 games. Punishing the teams themselves however might go even further to eradicating dirty play.

Why should a team be too concerned about a third line player getting suspended for two or three games or even eight, when they can just bring someone else in to fill the gaps. Should teams be fined heavily? Should they have a million dollars stripped off their cap limit for the following season for every 3 games worth of suspensions incurred? Should the coach be suspended also? Perhaps if the coach was made to sit out of the team were stripped of cap cash the coach and the management would very quick to come down hard on their players even thinking of doing something idiotic rather than jump to their defence when its their own players and point the finger when it’s someone elses player?

One idea I like is the gap in the roster if a player is suspended. If player ‘X’ is out for five games then the team cannot replace him in the line-up for five games … they must play a man short. That would quickly hurt a team and it would force them to work harder on their own players self control.

It isn’t that I don’t love physical Hockey … I do. I love it and I love it when it is done right. I don’t like to see a player stretchered off the ice like Marc Savard when there was nothing he could have done to avoid it. If however he is stretchered off for a good clean and proper Hockey hit to separate him from he puck, then that is just part of the game. An example is Alex Ovechkin…

Now, not to hold up Alexander Ovechkin as the beakon of correctness in the NHL for he to is serving a suspension for a questionable hit from behind earlier in the week, but he also often shows us how you indeed should apply a good hit in the NHL. In the example below Jaromir Jagr feels the force of Ovechkin’s shoulder to his jaw when he carries the puck across centre ice with his head down in a good clean north/south collision that Jagr could have avoided had he been more aware.

This kind of hit takes skill to throw also and it’s exactly how you should do it whether it be to change the momentum of a game – as Ovechkin used it for in this case – or serve as retribution for an earlier dirty play. If it’s for retribution and you aren’t going to fight him, at least give him something like Ovechkin gave to Jagr. Maybe someday we’ll be talking about such hits to Seabrook for a questionable hit rather than the kind of hit Seabrook had to absorb this time out, though that day won’t come until the NHL gets consistent with it’s punishment and cracks down hard.

Read more about: Alex Ovechkin, Brent Seabrook, Hits to the Head, James Wisniewski, Matt Cooke, NHL, NHL Discipline, You Tube | ALL SUBJECTS |

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