It was my first thought seconds after seeing the replay.  "Oh, for Christ sake, here they come again".  And I was right.  Marc Savard had no sooner come to rest from his unfortunate (and yes, plainly dirty...but more on that later) helicopter ride courtesy of Matt Cooke that the predictable, and oh so tiresome hue and cry went up from the bloviating hordes.  Suspend him!  Fine him!  Fine the coach!  Fine the team!  Ban him!  Fine him, THEN ban him!  Then fold the team!  WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?!

And almost immediately, the usual suspects step neatly upon their usual soapboxes, each on their usual sides of the usual line in the sand to start yelling at each other.  "You're a barbarian!"  "Oh yeah??  Well Mike Milbury says you're a pussy!  At least I think he does!  But he would!  If he wasn't a brain dead moron! And he'd be RIGHT!" and so on, until all sense of perspective is lost in spittle flying invective.  'Twas ever thus, and ever thus t'will be.

Suggestions abound on how to "fix" the problem of indiscriminate head hunting.  Some good (Hey ref!  Just call the damn game like you're supposed to!), some stupidly over reactive (all the better to sell newspapers, right Cam?), some startling in their "holy crap, never thought of that before" degree of perception, and some utterly ridiculous.  And all absolutely wrong.

Everything I've heard so far deals only with the rules around where on the body contact is first made, or what constitutes a clean hit.  All very interesting in a navel gazing academic kind of way but about as effective as The Bryan's speech therapist.  The easiest, quickest and most effective way to eliminate indiscriminate head shots?  Eliminate the "indiscriminate" part.

Eliminate the instigator rule.

For the record, Cooke's hit on Savard sickens me, as do all blatantly cheap shots (and before some sputtering yob calls me out on Neiler vs. John Mitchell's glass jaw on Saturday night...Mitchell could see it coming and still chose to make the play.  Admirable, if stupid.  Savard?  Not so much.  It's all about the blindside).  And as we all know, this wasn't the first time.

But what if, in that split second when he saw the back of Savard's oh so inviting head just sitting there like a ripe melon, Matt Cooke knew, without a scintilla of doubt, that should he continue in his chosen course of action retribution would come swiftly and with potentially face crippling severity?  What if that were a dead certainty?  Would he still make that hit?  Would you?

And this doesn't apply simply to head shots.  How nice would it be to be rid of slew foots or spears or career threatening cross checks two feet off the boards?  Chris Kelly and Patrice Bergeron both think that would be splendid.

Knee-on-knee?  We can only dream of a world in which Bryan Marchment never plays an NHL game but through some kind of Karmic justice, is forced to make his living repairing typewriters while spending his Saturday nights fending off knife wielding she-males lookin' for some lovin' (and a little crack) in a Scarborough strip mall.

And all it would take is a minor revision to the rule book.

Much has been made about how players "just don't respect each other anymore", as if in days of yore, there existed a golden age of hockey where opponents acted not out of naked self interest, but in some nebulous Pollyanna spirit of the game, doffing their leather helmets while offering hearty hip-hip-hoorays to their worthy opponents.  Total and utter bullshit.  They're being paid to play a game, and they will do everything and anything to ensure they stay in the league and continue to get paid to play that game.  "Respect" has never, and will never have anything to do with it.

But they do know pain and how to avoid it.

I think Marc Savard would agree, it's the easiest thing in the world to fix.  So why doesn't the league?

Comments (18)

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written by Michael Fisher Portnoy III, March 10, 2010

I'm in complete agreement with you here. Ultimately the difference is by taking the instigator away, you would then force every team to keep a thug on the payroll. I'm with you to a point, in that the fear of retribution would be the biggest deterrent, but to what length should we go to create that?

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written by Michael Fisher Portnoy III, March 10, 2010

Sorry, by complete agreement I mean something has to be done.

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written by SLC, March 10, 2010

...you would then force every team to keep a thug on the payroll.

While you might find this shocking, MOP3, I would be perfectly okay with that (I KNOW!). Mutually Assured Destruction ain't just for nostalgic Cold Warriors.

And as to what length we should go to create that deterrent? If memory serves, the hockey played in the late 70s and most of the 80s was pretty damn fine, and there was no instigator there. I'd suggest we go to whatever length would be necessary to recreate that.

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written by Smiles, March 10, 2010

I don't think that teams would even need to keep thugs on the payroll, it would be no different than it is now. Do you think Carkner wouldn't be able to dish out the kind of justice we're looking for if the instigator rule was gone? And he's no thug. There are already lots of thugs out there now, the problem is some of them are the ones who need a good whoopin'. I think guys like Carkner are the type of guys we need more of.

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written by SLC, March 10, 2010

Smiles: I am intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

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Afeared of your logic...
written by Oman, March 10, 2010

You paint a beautiful picture of the golden age of hockey goonery sir. I too pine for those mythic moments when Dave Semenko blundgened all who looked at The Great One with unfriendly intent...

My fear however, is that the way things have been going with hitting, the old cliche about "going to a fight and a hockey game broke out" would quickly become a reality.

How many times do you think a skilled open ice hitter like Volchenkov would have to drop the mitts to defend himself against all the Colton Orr's in the NHL?

You want to get rid of good hitting in the NHL? Try taking out the instigator penalty. Replace all the good hockey hits with more thugs, more fists to the head, and more concussions.

Stick that in your steamy middle.

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written by SLC, March 10, 2010

Ah, but your argument, Oman, seems to be based on a false premise. To wit: The players aren't smart enough to know a dirty hit from a clean...

*reads a little more*

"...all the Colton Orr's..."

Crap.

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written by SLC, March 10, 2010

Oh, and it's creamy middle, thank you. Middle aged, paunchy public servants don't have many steamy bits left.

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written by Oman, March 10, 2010

Ha ha.

Touché. ...I mean Huzzah!

I knew that pitting Orr against Volchy would help my argument.

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written by Oman, March 10, 2010

And yeah, I know. But I thought "steamy" had a nicer ring to it in that context.

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written by Smiles, March 10, 2010

You know what would would be awesome? A crazy new instigator rule! Hear me out: If a player (as per the rule book) makes a penalizable (is that a word?) hit on another player, ie. a dirty hit, then another player should be able to beat the stuffing out of said player with no 2 min. minor. If however a fight follows a clean hit, then the instigator of the fight should get the extra penalty. It'll never fly and would be hard to enforce, but it would be nice to have.

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written by Smiles, March 10, 2010

Oh and I should totally have a newsletter . . . however it would probably filled with nonsensical ramblings of everything rather unimportant. It would though provide me with hours of entertainment, like shiny objects or replays of Colton Orr trying to count.

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written by SLC, March 10, 2010

...nonsensical ramblings of everything rather unimportant...

Pssst...Smiles. Don't tell anybody, but that's called a "blog". You should give it a try. It's loads of fun. Trust me.

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written by Oman, March 11, 2010

I like it Smiles! With every "blind side" hit, they could quickly convert the arena into a caged octagon and have the perpetrator defend himself against the flying round house, leg take-downs, superman punches, rear naked chokes and general ground and pound of the opposing bench! When he is sufficiently bloodied or concussed, then the hockey match-type-event could resume.

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written by Smiles, March 11, 2010

why even keep the hockey?

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written by SLC, March 11, 2010

HACK THE BONE!!!

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written by neil_danz, March 12, 2010

This is why the players dont respect eachother:
1.Officiating is bad.
2.Refs TAKE OVER ENTIRE games.
3.EVERY penalty refs cant stay consistent anymore...so the players dont know what will be called.
4.The league is a bunch of pussys, wont suspend the right things and give preferential treatment to stars.
5.The obstruction rule clouds how long you can tail somebody before a hit.

So.........lets review.
1.Make it a 5 minute penalty for a direct hit to the head with malicious intent. Malicous intent=the player didnt have the puck anymore or it wouldve been easier to just poke check him.
2.Make all hits to the head REVIEWABLE for suspension IMMEDIATELY after the game.
3.Go back to the 1 ref system, and toss betman.

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written by Smiles, March 12, 2010

I'd like to see hits to the head reviewable during the game. Hit to the head gets made, no one sees, go back to the replay and toss the player in the box (or out).

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