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Sunday, March 13, 2011
The NHL ruled that Zdeno Chara's brutal hit on Max Pacioretty was clean.(Jean-Yves Ahern/Icon SMI)
Sorry if you're sick of hearing about head injuries in sports, but it's perfectly impossible to ignore the topic when you're watching an NHL game.
Which is all Sidney Crosby is doing these days.
Crosby was one of four concussed Penguins unavailable for Saturday's game against Montreal, which has a concussed player of its own. Top-line winger Max Pacioretty has a broken neck, too, after Boston defenseman Zdeno Chara slammed him face-first into a stanchion between the benches.
The NHL didn't think it was intentional. Pacioretty apparently did, unless I'm misreading his following quote, as told to TSN: "I believe he was trying to guide my head into the turnbuckle."
You might remember similar quotes from Hulk Hogan in the 1980s, brother.
According to The Concussion Blog website, 72 NHL players — 10 percent of the league — have been concussed this season. That should make commissioner Gary Bettman sick. How can you run a league when your work force is being ravaged?
Bettman tried to douse the flames last week by claiming most of the hits that have caused concussions this season were inadvertent. As if nothing can be done.
Hey, Gary: One of 10 players in your league has suffered a brain injury this season.
It's time to take serious action, and the NHL's 30 general managers are just the men to do it. They convene this week in Florida and will at least discuss the possibility of outlawing checks to the head. That would mark a dramatic extension of Rule 48, an edict instituted this season banning hits to the side and back of the head.
All that's left is the front.
"I'm on record for saying I really want to look at it," said Penguins general manager Ray Shero. "(The issue) is something that's on everybody's plate."
If there is sufficient support, GMs could recommend to the league's Board of Governors to make a rule change, though I wouldn't count on it. Too many hockey people are afraid the game would be irrevocably pansified.
Consider the answer I received during a radio interview when I asked Versus analyst and former NHL forward Keith Jones if he thought the GMs would call for a ban of head hits.
"I won't be watching if they do," he said. "It'll be difficult to throw a body check at all."
That is an understandable concern, shared by many, though I happen to disagree. The game would still be plenty physical. And if the worst thing that happens while players adjust is an inordinate amount of power plays, so what? More offense isn't a bad thing.
Nobody's saying this would be an easy rule to implement. But here's hoping common sense prevails over blind allegiance to the status quo. Here's hoping GMs summon the courage for radical change. One look at the league landscape, littered as it is with dozens of concussed carcasses, calls for it.
Shero made a critical point when he reminded me that head hits are banned in the NCAA, the Ontario Hockey League and the International Ice Hockey Federation and that "the NHL gets 75 percent of its players from those leagues."
To get a feel for how the OHL ban works, I spoke with several men involved in the league, a major junior league for players ages 15-20. Five years ago, the OHL deemed any hit to the head illegal. The penalty could be as minimal as a two-minute minor, cleverly termed a "check to the head," or carry major consequences.
"This rule has in no way deterred physicality in our game," OHL commissioner David Branch said.
Others I spoke with, including ex-NHL player Warren Rychel, disagreed. Rychel is part-owner of the OHL's Windsor Spitfires.
"Every time there's a loud noise (big hit) in our league, a hand goes up," Rychel said. "Everybody thinks it's a head shot, and it's often not."
Still, Rychel isn't against the NHL adopting the rule. Neither is longtime NHL star Doug Gilmour, whose blood-and-guts career lasted 1,474 games. Gilmour coaches the OHL's Kingston Frontenacs.
I wondered, do OHL games still qualify as full-contact hockey?
"Yeah, very much," Gilmour said. "But we're talking about kids. It's different when you're talking about grown men in the National Hockey League and the speed of the game. Still, something has to be reviewed because you can't keep losing players."
So NHL, watcha gonna do?
Read more: Starkey: Time for NHL to outlaw head hits - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/sports/s_727158.html#ixzz1GZkJlWV6
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