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 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.

Edit: new video [...]]]> 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.

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.

Nasal splints are made of silicon and are stuffed into the nostrils after rhinoplasty or septoplasty in order to stabilize the septum for healing and to prevent adhesion of the healing wounds inside the nose.  They’re totally [...]]]> This is what I’m in for next Wednesday -- and couldn’t be looking forward to it more.

Nasal splints are made of silicon and are stuffed into the nostrils after rhinoplasty or septoplasty in order to stabilize the septum for healing and to prevent adhesion of the healing wounds inside the nose.  They’re totally necessary, but they’re also absurdly huge.  Right now I can feel them both, crammed far enough up my nose that they might be touching my brain.  On Wednesday I have an appointment to have them removed, but in the meantime there are a host of YouTube users who have had the courtesy of uploading their own splint removal -- and boy, is it something.

On the good side, the procedure doesn’t seem especially painful.  Opinions vary, with some people seeming to actually enjoy it and others saying it hurts just a little.  Everyone agrees that it’s a bizarre feeling, like having your brain pulled out in preparation for mummification.  That, and they all agree that it’s a tremendous relief, and breathing afterward is pure pleasure.  I’m really looking forward to it.

In case you enjoyed that first one, after the jump I’m embedding a few more YouTubers having their splints removed.  If you’re really getting off on this, a search on YouTube will turn up dozens more.

I had the good fortune to enjoy a vacation in the Caribbean this past week, on which the first stop was Key West.  Though the weather drove me away from the beach, I was able to tour the Ernest Hemingway House and take in the considerable population of semi-domestic cats who have free reign of [...]]]>

I had the good fortune to enjoy a vacation in the Caribbean this past week, on which the first stop was Key West.  Though the weather drove me away from the beach, I was able to tour the Ernest Hemingway House and take in the considerable population of semi-domestic cats who have free reign of the property.  The 50 or so cats are descendants of Hemingway’s own pets, many of them polydactyl – meaning they had extra toes, not that they were flying dinosaurs.  The house is pretty famous for the cats.

A diversity of personalities are represented, as any cat lover would expect, but most seem acclimated to the tourists who often try to make friends.  In general they were appreciative, or at least tolerant of being pet – with one notable exception.  My right wrist now bears three parallel scars inflicted by a chubby gray-and-white fellow who offered no other warning that my hand was unwelcome.  I figure as a writer myself I should wear the scar with pride.  My scars will be a lifelong memento of my visit to the Hemingway House.

I didn’t get a photo of the culprit, but I was able to get some great photos of a few other cats.  That first guy is my favorite, but here are a few more: