Rink Rat is Pissed Off

So how many hours ago did I say the NHL moonbats (GM’s), were pontificating over how to categorize and enforce hits to the head? Here we are, how many hours outside of the cigar smoking, margarita sipping conference in Boca Raton since yours truly posited that the league had lost focus, putting their cross-hairs on an issue far less important than players getting hit on the numbers.

Ovechkin’s hit on Campbell was gasping. As a player, I absolutely love the guy – he is what the NHL stands for: competitive, skilled, tough as nails, fearless, and not afraid to hit.

But this hit on Campbell could have come at an unforgiving price. And its not the only time Ovie has done this. Ovie will rightfully sit for 2 games for the stunt he pulled on Campbell.
 
I think some of you took me the wrong way in my article. My point on head shots is simply this:

It is going to be very difficult to categorize a head shot. There absolutely has to be some policing of the head shots, and decisions at the ice level will have to be made within 2-3 minutes, with no replay to watch and no true knowledge of that players history. Its not like they can pull out their i-phones and hit the application for “Frequent Head Shot Data Base” to find out how many times a player has hit someone. We have to be careful how we change the rulebook in the NHL. Ideas have consequences. I like instant replay and I think it needs to be used more. Once the rule is established, a referee makes a call on the hit, and it goes to Toronto.

 For God friggen sakes, people… If a guy gets hit in the face with a stick and draws blood, it increases the consequence. We all KNOW the high stick happened, but until a zebra inspects the players injury, we cant determine the penalty.

 In the case of head shots, the referee can blow the whistle and call boarding, interference, elbowing, whatever; and then go to replay to determine if the player broke the established rule. Why will we do this for questionable goals, but not for enforcing a potentially life-saving rule without taking the (audience-saving) physicality out of the game? Not to mention we can NOT be arbitrarily penalizing players because they simply “have a reputation” and the on-ice official has no proof. If this sort of discipline was handed down in the corporate world they would have authorities and attorneys probing their assholes for whatever damages they can bleed from them.

The action and the call should speak for itself. The ONLY way for the league to do that is to go to replay. Will it extend the game time? Yea, but how often does this really happen? Besides it means more commercials and more money for the network.

The other piece to this is the one that no one has thought of, and that’s the equipment the players are wearing. There needs to be some research on the type of hits that cause the injuries and exactly WHAT the injuries are. You can make rules, you can police those rules, and maybe you can cut down the number of injuries. Every bit of research demonstrates that lowering speed limits and wearing seat belts saved lives. But it wasn’t until airbags were developed, tested and utilized that a clear reduction in mortality could be quantified for high velocity impact. The game is different – its faster, the players are bigger – and the protective equipment simply has not evolved with the game. Instead, the moonbats got together and talked about how we can “change the rulebook on head hits”.

That’s was IT!

Nothing about players getting hit from behind (like the hit on Campbell), nothing about equipment; nothing about instant replay; nothing about case-by-case versus reputation…

I wonder who paid for the GM retreat and where that money could have been better spent.

Either way I bet the weather was great and Florida and while guys like Brent Sutter (coach of the Calgary Flames) and a million other white and blue collar folks in the great nations of US and Canada are out of work, not one of those guys really worried about having a job come August.

And you wonder why I call them “moonbats”…