Here, according to Greg Wyshynski at Puck Daddy, is a comparisson between the NHL’s old (as in one-year-old) and new rules regarding headshots:

…and here is my proposed headshot rule, circa March 7, 2010:

(1) Any hit that either (a) contacts only the head or (b) contacts the head before any other part of the body, whether intentional or unintentional on the part of the player initiating the hit, should be a minor penalty.

(2) Any hit where, in the referee’s determination, the player initiating the hit deliberately (a) targetted only the head or (b) targetted the head before any other part of the body should be a match penalty.

I referred back to that proposed rule in two other posts, one on March 9, 2010, and one on April 17 of that same year. Combined, those three posts have 173 hits. As I see it, the evidence is incontrovertible: I have single-handedly saved the NHL from its headshot problem. While I’m at it, let me say hello to Brendan Shanahan, who is obviously a reader. Hi, Shannie. Nice work. Sorry you didn’t join the Blueshirts when you were a little younger.

In all seriousness, I love the new rule. I only hope it’s enforced the way it’s written. Under the new rule, the infamous Richards-on-Booth hit is a penalty, as it would be under the “old” rule. This Kaleta-on-Markov hit, which would have been legal under the old rule, is now a penalty, as it should be – but the catastrophic-yet-accidental Steckel-Crosby collision at the Winter Classic would still be legal. That’s a good rule.

Will there be complaining? Absolutely, there will be. Plenty of fans (and commentators, and journalists) will complain about specific hits that seem accidental or unavoidable. I will say as I have said in the past: this is an NHL that presently enforces minor penalties for (a) accidentally clearing the puck over the glass, and (b) accidentally breaking an opponent’s stick. Surely, protecting the health of players’ brains is worth the same measures we use to prevent broken equipment and play stoppages, even if it means a few wrong calls.

While the NHL is making my rule-change dreams come true, I have another recommendation: First, let’s start enforcing that diving rule a little more regularly. Then, let’s change the rules so that instead of offsetting minors, a diving penalty negates the original call and forces the diver’s team to kill a penalty. I give it until Christmas before diving is essentially eliminated from the game.

[Credit to David Byrne for the post title]

Way back in November of 2007 I posted about the sordid saga of Ethan Reynolds, formerly of the model blog / community Brat Boy School (since shut down; internet wayback machine link here – caution, it loads slowly).  I’m seeing echoes of that experience in the recent downfall of “Hockey Kid Mikey,” an alleged gay high school hockey player promoted by gay web site OutSports who, after building a small empire on the web, turned out to probably be a 40-year-old gay hockey fan.

Both appear to be cases where some blogger used the magical power of the internet to pretend to be someone else.  In both cases the bloggers built an enormous base of enamored fans, and in both cases their success began to open doors outside the internet shortly before their fictitious persona fell apart.  In neither case were any actual crimes (apparently) committed, and yet in both cases the fans, once betrayed, called for blood.

As I was in 2007, I am fascinated by the response from fans.  It’s not as if this technique is old.  I’ve compared Ethan to nudie centerfolds, who always seem to find titillating answers to the same questionnaire, but the creation of a fictional persona is not limited to the vaguely pornographic.  Think of Dear Abby, or Poor Richard, or for that matter any talk-show host.  None of these people is really the person they present to the world.  Granted, that fact is disclosed to varying degrees, but I’d imagine there are many Letterman fans who would be outraged to discover the real person behind the television character he portrays.  This is, I would hazard to say, at least partly to blame for the outrage behind the most recent “Late Night Wars,” and why Jay Leno emerged as the villain while Conan’s popularity grew: cutthroat businessman is pretty far removed from the brand Jay has been selling his viewers, while  Conan’s brand is apparently not as far from his actual personality.

I understand that blogs are a personal means of expression, but the idea that one person can really connect with another via the internet is dubious.  The very nature of the internet is artificial; social networking sites are entirely based around the business of carefully crafting a personal brand.  Like the sci-fi trope of the “other-dimensional being extending into our dimension”, our online avatars represent exactly that portion of ourselves that we have decided to show to others.  Some people elect to make that portion decades younger, or more attractive, or more athletic, than the aging corporeal meat to which their consciousness is tethered.  I find it fairly depressing that so many people attach themselves emotionally to a being who is essentially just digital code, to the point where they become murderous or suicidal (as several of Mikey’s readers claimed to be) when Toto pulls back the curtain.

Not that I’m encouraging this kind of business practice.  When the actual human behind the “Hockey Kid Mikey” character started to notice his blog community growing out of control – when he started getting comments from gay teenagers who said his words saved them from suicide – that was probably the time to pull the rip-cord.  Delete the blog and vanish, or come clean about creating a false persona, rather than riding it out like George Costanza until your lies finally blow up in your face.

Ultimately, unless the writer is committing some kind of crime (and I stress here that, so far at least, there is no evidence of any crime) then the onus must be on the reader to approach everything on the internet with skepticism.  How different is emotionally attaching oneself to an invisible blogger from believing the latest chain email about how microwaved water causes cancer or Barrack Obama is planning to give Texas back to Mexico?   The internet is, more than anything else, a colossal work of collaborative fiction.  Historical fiction, perhaps, but fiction.  Anyone who approaches it otherwise is going to get burned.

For my part, I have a confession to make: I am not as smart as I come across on my blog.  The crafting of each post includes frequent visits to Wikipedia, and some sentences are even revised before publication.  Speak with me in person and you’ll quickly notice I struggle to recall the names of the most major historical figures, I confuse the dates of major events, and I giggle every time Noam Chomsky is mentioned because I get a mental image of a pac-man like monster devouring everything he sees (I call him CHOMP-sky).  I do promise, however, that I am the person I claim to be.  At least the good parts.

Andy Sutton’s hit on Jordan Leopold in last night’s Senators-Penguins game nicely illustrates that the new “lateral backpressure” rule doesn’t address the NHL’s real problem.  Skip ahead to the one minute mark for a good slow-motion look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgMG9iLx4Qc

I have one problem, and one problem only, with this hit – but it’s a big problem. Andy Sutton very intentionally and deliberately targets Leopold’s head.  Leopold is clearly in a vulnerable position and doesn’t see Sutton coming, which means Sutton can apply any hit he chooses – and he chooses to avoid contact with Leopold’s body and hit only the head.  Notice the way Sutton spins off of Leopold into the boards?  That type of spin-off is the same you see in a head-on car crash, where one swerving driver is trying to avoid the collision and doesn’t quite make it. Notice that term trying to avoid, because that’s really what Sutton does here.  He specifically tries to avoid Leopold’s body, so that he can transfer all of his energy into Leopold’s head.

Sutton’s defenders point out, correctly, that Leopold had his head down, that Sutton kept his elbow at his side, that this is not a “lateral backpressure” hit, but a head-on (no pun intended) open-ice hit, and that based on those criteria this is currently a legal NHL hit, a “hockey play” as has become popular vernacular recently.  This is all true, but I counter that this should not be a legal NHL hit for one simple, clear reason: a hit that specifically targets the head (solely or primarily) is, and should always be regarded as, intent to injure.

At this point, there is abundant evidence, both from scientific studies of the long-term effect of concussions and from the observable on-ice consequences of hits to the head, to demonstrate that a head-hit is one of the most dangerous, if not the most dangerous, play that a hockey player can make.  Be it the McSorley stick to Brashear’s head, Bertuzzi’s punch to Steve Moore (or Matt Johnson’s to Jeff Beukeboom), the slapshot to the noggin that ended Mike Richter’s career, or any of the assorted interchangeable “lateral backside” hits of the past three seasons (Mike Richards and Matt Cooke get gold stars) we have all seen the ugly consequences of a hard hit applied to the head.

Furthermore, there is absolutely no reason the NHL should tolerate one player specifically targeting another player’s head.  These types of hits do not make the game more exciting or more entertaining.  As a long-time hockey fan, I see the value and the role of the big hit and the hockey fight, both of which I have spoken out to defend.  They are a part of the fabric of the game, major momentum changers, and fantastically entertaining.  A hit to the head is none of those things.  It is an ugly incident, a momentum killer when, as often happens, it is followed by ten minutes of bringing a player out on a stretcher, it embarrasses the league as the hit gets played over and over again on sports news networks, and it can diminish the quality of the overall game if the concussed player happens to be among a team’s top scorer.

Let’s also remember that these types of hits have never been part of the sport.  In fact, they are a recent development.  The NHL’s talking points, repeated ad nauseum after the GM meeting that gave us the “lateral backside” rule, would have us believe that these hits are a consequence of increased speed and open ice, a nasty side effect of a very desirable improvement in the game.  That’s probably true in small part, but any hockey fan can tell you that there is one main cause for this kind of hitting: the NHL’s asinine zero-tolerance approach to “retaliation” means that players can no longer defend themselves or their teammates, and thanks to the “it’s not in the rulebook” argument, these kinds of hits will generally go unpunished, no matter how much sleep Colin Campbell may lose.

This is not a unique circumstance.  In the 1980s and 1990s, the NHL struggled with epidemics of slew-footing and hits targeting the knee.  Then they passed rules against both and started handing out penalties and supplemental discipline, and now how often do we see a slew foot or a deliberate hit to the knee in an NHL game? Four or five times a season maybe?  Meanwhile, hardly a game goes by without at least one ugly head-only hit.

The solution here is a clear rule barring players from targeting the head, solely or primarily, when applying a check.  I will reiterate the rule change I have proposed before:

(1) Any hit that either (a) contacts only the head or (b) contacts the head before any other part of the body, whether intentional or unintentional on the part of the player initiating the hit, should be a minor penalty.

(2) Any hit where, in the referee’s determination, the player initiating the hit deliberately (a) targetted only the head or (b) targetted the head before any other part of the body should be a match penalty.

Granted, it might require some word-tweaking from those more familiar with the rulebook than I am, but a rule like this would address the specific problem and still protect the integrity of the game.  Sutton could still punish Leopold with a devastating check, but he would be penalized for the hit in the video above.  It wouldn’t exactly be difficult to hit Leopold’s body – in fact, it would take less effort than the precision head-strike Sutton did apply.  One of my favorite things about this hit, in terms of illustrating my argument, is that no one can argue that “Leopold tried to dodge the hit and that’s why it just hit his head,” as they did with the Richards-Booth hit and several others.

My plea to fellow hockey fans is to please refrain from the slippery-slope argument that says that outlawing one form of hitting is going to lead to taking hitting out of hockey altogether.  The NHL has outlawed types of hits before (boarding, for instance, or knee-on-knee hits) and we still have a physical game.

Yes, a rule like this might occasionally result in a minor penalty for an unintended hit to the head – but as I have said before, the NHL already awards minor penalties for unintentionally clearing the puck out of play and for unintentionally breaking another player’s stick.  Are we really advocating a league where broken sticks and pucks in the crowd are treated more harshly than intentionally injurious and potentially career-ending attacks on fellow players?

The aftermath of Sunday’s Matt Cooke head-shot on Marc Savard has left Savard with an uncertain future and the NHL mired in controversy yet again.  Coming just a day before a meeting of General Managers, the Cooke hit was one more point in an argument the players have made very convincingly all season long that the league must do something to stop this madness.

I don’t read a lot of hockey blogs, but I read Greg Wyshynski at Puck Daddy fairly regularly, and I’m a little disappointed in his approach to this.  For one thing, he gets sidetracked, like a lot of die-hard hockey fans, by the fear that arguments like this one open the door for those who would, in Mike Milbury’s words, “pansify” the sport.  That fear leads him to argue too hard against the pansifiers, and he ends up defending what he should be condemning.

Wysh, I understand your concern.  We’re both hockey fans.  We both love physical, hard, grinding hockey.  We love that the playoffs are a battle of attrition where no player emerges unharmed.  We love what it requires for a person to be a hockey player.  Neither of us wants to see that change.  But as hockey fans, we have to be firm here: targeting the head has never been acceptable in the history of the NHL, and it is not acceptable now.

We may speculate as to why headhunting has become more prevalent– personally I think it’s a combination of the instigator rule diminishing the consequences and better equipment making hits to the body just play hurt less — but regardless of reason, this has become a plague on the NHL, and it’s up to the league to do something about it.

There are two points Wysh makes with which I take issue.  The first is that there is a big difference between the Cooke hit on Savard and the hit early in the season by Mike Richards on David Booth.  Wysh’s point is that the Cooke hit is just a plain old dirty play, while the Richards hit is a valid hockey play, an attempt to separate Booth from the puck.  I agree with this, and the distinction is important – but less important, to me, than what the two plays have in common.  In both cases, one player caught another player in a vulnerable position, and rather than applying a devastating body check, they chose to target the head, and only the head.

The second point Wysh makes is that it’s hypocritical to oppose hits to the head and yet defend fighting, because both carry the risk of brain injury.  Again, I see the argument, but I do think there’s a world of difference between hockey fight and headhunting.  Wysh cites an argument he had with Keith Primeau on TSN’s Off The Record:

“I spoke with Keith… about the head shots issue as it relates to fighting, because I have a problem with fans or pundits screaming “protect the brains!” one minute and then having a winking endorsement of fists slamming against those brains the next. I find it an illogical stance, from a player safety standpoint.

Primeau said the difference was that a player doesn’t ask to be hit to the head, but willfully accepts the risk in a fight. My argument is the player accepts risk by playing in the NHL, and that the League can only do so much to protect them in what is an inherently violent sport.”

With respect to Keith Primeau, who certainly has more personal experience with this than I, his point is valid but his phrasing is off.  The important distinction is that in a fight there is no victim.  Two man enter, as the saying goes, and if only one man leave, at least they both knew those were the terms.  A hockey fight is rarely, if ever, a case of one guy seeing another in a vulnerable position and exploiting him.  A head to the head is just that, every time.

What the NHL GMs are apparently considering right now is a ban on “blindside hits,” or some rule governing shoulder contact with the head.  Neither, to me, gets at the heart of the problem, and both run the risk of doing more damage than good.   As Wysh rightly points out, there is always a risk in any contact sport of a concussion occurring.  There is always a risk of unintentional contact with the head.

I reiterate the rule suggestion that I proposed in my last post:

(1) Any hit that either (a) contacts only the head or (b) contacts the head before any other part of the body, whether intentional or unintentional on the part of the player initiating the hit, should be a minor penalty.

(2) Any hit where, in the referee’s determination, the player initiating the hit deliberately (a) targetted only the head or (b) targetted the head before any other part of the body should be a match penalty.

Under such a rule, the Richards hit on Booth would be a two-minute minor, and the Cooke hit on Savard would be a match penalty.  Players would still be allowed to apply a “blindside hit” against a guy watching his pass or skating with his head down, provided they went for the body and not the head.  Contact with the head would not automatically be a penalty, provided that it resulted from a clean hit (ie, contact was initiated with the body and the head contact was incidental) and if a hit intended to be clean accidentally resulted in a head-first or head-only hit, the consequences would not be overly severe.  As I said last post, the NHL currently awards a minor penalty for accidentally breaking another player’s stick or accidentally clearing the puck out of play.

Wysh quotes Colin Campbell to the Toronto Star: “it all really comes down to the Richards-Booth hit. … The question is, are we going to shift more responsibility to the hitter than the player being hit?”  Under the rule I’m proposing, the only responsibility on the hitter is to make sure he’s not targeting the head.

The NHL seems to have a knack for addressing problems the wrong way several times before trying the right way (see: the crease rule, video review, the trapezoid, moving the goal line).  In this case I think we have a solution that actually solves the problem at hand – but we need fans and officials to get behind it, and not argue otherwise because they fear the slippery slope.

Still recovering from my septoplasty surgery, so I’ve spent most of this beautiful Philadelphia Sunday sitting inside watching NHL Center Ice.  I’ve just watched Marc Savard of the Bruins carried off the ice of Pittsburgh’s Mellon Arena on a stretcher, after left wing Matt Cooke tried to disconnect his head from his body.

Edit: new video below.  This one’s less dramatic and shows more context.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z1vJrIAg-0

As is far too common these days, Cooke saw that Savard was vulnerable, came in from his blind spot, and hit Savard in such a way as to maximize impact to the head – and, as is almost as common, there was no penalty on the ice.  I expect Cooke will be suspended once the league reviews the hit, but in the meantime the Bruins lose one of their most important offensive players, and the Penguins get to keep their two points.  Cooke will lose a few games worth of pay, but he will ensure job stability in the salary-cap era by being a guy who will “deliver a big hit.”

It seems rare these days to get through a single NHL game without one of these hits, and I have to say that it’s become disgusting.  I am a die-hard NHL fan, a defender of the hockey fight and the big hit, but I cannot stomach the way these players target each others’ heads, especially with the research that has recently been emerging about the long-term consequences of sports concussions.  While league officials and GMs debate the merits of penalizing this kind of play, athletes are seeing their lives shortened and worsened by plays that should never be allowed in any reputable league.

Meanwhile, international hockey leagues carefully protect the heads of their players.  As we recently saw in the Olympics, IIHF rules forbid players from playing without a helmet, and hand out swift justice for hits to the head.  I do feel that the IIHF goes too far (if a player wants to continue playing without his helmet, for instance, I don’t see why that should be penalized) but I do think the NHL needs to take action – definitive, clear action – to stop the headhunting that pollutes this league.

My proposed solution for the NHL is as follows:

(1) Any hit that either (a) contacts only the head or (b) contacts the head before any other part of the body, whether intentional or unintentional on the part of the player initiating the hit, should be a minor penalty.

(2) Any hit where, in the referee’s determination, the player initiating the hit deliberately (a) targetted only the head or (b) targetted the head before any other part of the body should be a match penalty.

At this point, I believe it is safe to say that these sorts of hits will result in injury.  Therefore, any player who intentionally hits in this fashion intends to injure the other player, which justifies a match penalty.

The main objection most people have to this argument is against the “unintentional” hits to the head.  My response is that the NHL already awards a two minute power play when a player (a) breaks the stick of an opponent, even unintentionally, or (b) clears the puck out of play, even unintentionally.  I find it pretty hard to accept that a broken stick or puck out of play are less tolerable than a player’s health and career being risked with a hit to the head.

I have no wish to see hitting reduced in the NHL, but I do want to see these blind-side head-only or head-first hits stopped.  I am tired of the argument that any hit where a guy keeps his skates on the ice and his elbows down is a “clean hit.”  They are only “clean” because the rulebook says otherwise, which is a major oversight.  Hockey players know how devastating those types of hits are, or they wouldn’t throw them so often.  I do believe that a guy has to keep his head up, and I like to see the big hit against the player who watches his pass or skates with his head down across the blue-line – but I want that hit to be delivered to his body, or his hips, or his chest.  I don’t want to see another player victimize him by clipping him across the head.

Until the NHL does something drastic about this kind of play, nothing is going to change, and the game will continue to suffer for it.