Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Simon suspension just right - but we're not done yet
After viewing several weeks worth of late hits and cheap shots NHL disciplinarian Colin Campbell finally put his stamp on this current season with a 25 game suspension (minimum) to New York Islanders Chris Simon for his slash to the face of New York Rangers Ryan Hollweg. It was an appropriate call in my view given the severity of the stick work however it should not be extended beyond that like Marty McSorley’s and Todd Bertuzzi’s nor was it by far as bad as others in the history of the NHL. Incidentally, why the main stream media don’t report this is beyond me but the longest suspension handed down in NHL history for an on ice incident was to Boston’s Bill Coutu in 1927. Coutu flattened both game officials during a wild bench clearing brawl at the conclusion of the 1927 Stanley Cup final between Boston and the Ottawa Senators. Jerry Laflamme and Billy Bell were the two officials and Coutu, in plain view of league President Frank Calder, drilled both officials with punches and had to be restrained from doing more damage than that. Calder saw enough from that action to suspend Coutu for life from the NHL. Coutu toiled in the minors for two seasons and in 1929 his life time ban was lifted but he was through with hockey at that point and never did play in the NHL again. Somewhat similar to the Marty McSorley story.
If you are a fan of the game though, there is a major cause for concern. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, what we have now is a vastly different culture of hitting through out the league. Shifts are short, players can all skate, they are all well built and equipment is light yet has increased in size and in the capability of it to hurt. When you are hit anywhere with today’s elbow pads and shoulder pads you feel it unlike ‘back in the day’ when the soft padding and small yet solid enough shoulder cup was all that prevented us from injury to those upper parts of our body. Anybody with children playing or if you are playing yourself you know that the equipment from our youth has been replaced by hard plastic that has been the cause for many of the concussions we see today. I still use my shoulder pads that I wore in Juvenile and college hockey, 25-30 years ago and yes they are old and old looking but compared to the Robocop type of equipment of today they are archaic. Funny thing is I played full contact until I was 24 years old and the only concussion I suffered was as a result of a shot to my face, not from being hit with any type of check which I was many, many times. I digress.
The culture of hitting today is predatory by nature and it’s conducted primarily by a type of player that has flourished in today’s NHL with its lack of accountability and lack of respect. Players like Ryan Hollweg are making a career of playing 7-8 minutes a game and by going out in 40 second shifts to hit anything that moves. The hit on Chris Simon should have been penalized. Who knows, had one of the officials been signaling a penalty perhaps that might have been enough to stem Simon’s rage. Then again Hollweg skated right back at him I suspect because he knew damn well he had a tiger by the tail and was hoping for a retaliatory strike. Boy did he get that!
Folks, this type of reaction by Chris Simon will happen again. Probably sooner rather than later. If you have never played contact hockey you are incapable of knowing the extreme venom that wells inside of you in a very brief moment where in a 20 or 30 second period you would commit the most heinous act on the ice because you simply ‘lose it.’ I guarantee you that somewhere here in my home town of Ottawa or the Valley, somewhere every single night there is some sort of confrontation between two or more players because of a perceived or real transgression. And this is in men’s leagues where everybody is getting up to go to work the next day. Multiply that by 1000 to get the feeling in a pro game where you are paid to play – where you are the elite of the elite even the enforcers and where any little thing in a game can have consequences on you, your team or your season. These guys are already on the razor’s edge and their very livelihood depends on it.
This is why players HAVE to be allowed to police themselves to some extent. We’ve had three major situations in the past three weeks. Chris Neil on Chris Drury, Cam Janssen on Tomas Kaberle and now Chris Simon on Ryan Hollweg. None of the original hits were penalized yet I can tell you time and time again – there will be repercussions from these types of hits at the NHL level and their darn well should be! Whether you call them all clean or whatever – they are dirty shots that you would not have seen in the NHL 15-20 years ago. If you threw a shot like that in that time period or before you knew very well that somebody or more likely everybody would be gunning for you immediately and because of that you picked your spot. You rarely saw a player hit in a vulnerable position. You almost never saw a blindside hit. You virtually never saw hitting from behind. These are all products of the ‘new’ NHL. Welcome to it. It sucks. It’s brutal. It’s spawned a new sort of gutless player which is ironic to say because these perpetrators of these hits in most cases are pretty tough lads in their own right but believe me when I say this – if you think I’m wrong ask somebody you know who knows the game from ‘back in the day’ these types of hits would not happen just a few short decades ago. The NHL needs to lose the instigator rule immediately and they need to eliminate gratuitous shots to the head. I don’t care that Chris Neil said he ‘hits to hurt.’ That’s fine, he’s young. When he’s older he’ll see how stupid a thing that was to say but for now please allow the players the ability to bring the respect back into the game. Believe me, they will, in a hurry and we’ll have a much better, much cleaner league for it.
Liam Maguire
If you are a fan of the game though, there is a major cause for concern. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, what we have now is a vastly different culture of hitting through out the league. Shifts are short, players can all skate, they are all well built and equipment is light yet has increased in size and in the capability of it to hurt. When you are hit anywhere with today’s elbow pads and shoulder pads you feel it unlike ‘back in the day’ when the soft padding and small yet solid enough shoulder cup was all that prevented us from injury to those upper parts of our body. Anybody with children playing or if you are playing yourself you know that the equipment from our youth has been replaced by hard plastic that has been the cause for many of the concussions we see today. I still use my shoulder pads that I wore in Juvenile and college hockey, 25-30 years ago and yes they are old and old looking but compared to the Robocop type of equipment of today they are archaic. Funny thing is I played full contact until I was 24 years old and the only concussion I suffered was as a result of a shot to my face, not from being hit with any type of check which I was many, many times. I digress.
The culture of hitting today is predatory by nature and it’s conducted primarily by a type of player that has flourished in today’s NHL with its lack of accountability and lack of respect. Players like Ryan Hollweg are making a career of playing 7-8 minutes a game and by going out in 40 second shifts to hit anything that moves. The hit on Chris Simon should have been penalized. Who knows, had one of the officials been signaling a penalty perhaps that might have been enough to stem Simon’s rage. Then again Hollweg skated right back at him I suspect because he knew damn well he had a tiger by the tail and was hoping for a retaliatory strike. Boy did he get that!
Folks, this type of reaction by Chris Simon will happen again. Probably sooner rather than later. If you have never played contact hockey you are incapable of knowing the extreme venom that wells inside of you in a very brief moment where in a 20 or 30 second period you would commit the most heinous act on the ice because you simply ‘lose it.’ I guarantee you that somewhere here in my home town of Ottawa or the Valley, somewhere every single night there is some sort of confrontation between two or more players because of a perceived or real transgression. And this is in men’s leagues where everybody is getting up to go to work the next day. Multiply that by 1000 to get the feeling in a pro game where you are paid to play – where you are the elite of the elite even the enforcers and where any little thing in a game can have consequences on you, your team or your season. These guys are already on the razor’s edge and their very livelihood depends on it.
This is why players HAVE to be allowed to police themselves to some extent. We’ve had three major situations in the past three weeks. Chris Neil on Chris Drury, Cam Janssen on Tomas Kaberle and now Chris Simon on Ryan Hollweg. None of the original hits were penalized yet I can tell you time and time again – there will be repercussions from these types of hits at the NHL level and their darn well should be! Whether you call them all clean or whatever – they are dirty shots that you would not have seen in the NHL 15-20 years ago. If you threw a shot like that in that time period or before you knew very well that somebody or more likely everybody would be gunning for you immediately and because of that you picked your spot. You rarely saw a player hit in a vulnerable position. You almost never saw a blindside hit. You virtually never saw hitting from behind. These are all products of the ‘new’ NHL. Welcome to it. It sucks. It’s brutal. It’s spawned a new sort of gutless player which is ironic to say because these perpetrators of these hits in most cases are pretty tough lads in their own right but believe me when I say this – if you think I’m wrong ask somebody you know who knows the game from ‘back in the day’ these types of hits would not happen just a few short decades ago. The NHL needs to lose the instigator rule immediately and they need to eliminate gratuitous shots to the head. I don’t care that Chris Neil said he ‘hits to hurt.’ That’s fine, he’s young. When he’s older he’ll see how stupid a thing that was to say but for now please allow the players the ability to bring the respect back into the game. Believe me, they will, in a hurry and we’ll have a much better, much cleaner league for it.
Liam Maguire
# posted by Liam Maguire @ 3:19 PM 
