The NHL Competition Committee will be meeting tonight and the two hottest topics on their list are slashing and video reviews of offsides’ play calling, according to Sportsnet’s Emily Sadler. Both topics have been issues in the NHL recently throughout the playoffs.
The competition committee will look into video reviews, which could mean eliminating it to changing the way teams can challenge the calls. Offsides calls have played a major factor as it has an impact on game pace and an impact on goals scored. The Predators had a goal taken away in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals after a narrow offsides review. There are plenty of criticisms of the replay, such as the length of time it takes to come to a decision as well as many people don’t think that the review was meant to check offsides calls to the inch.
Slashing has also been an issue as the NHL has been monitoring all slashes, concluding that there are as many as 80 slashes over the course of an average NHL game. While it is said the NHL does not want to send 80 people to the penalty box a game, they will look especially into slashing at players’ hands. The best example of slashing to the hands was the severe finger injury that Ottawa Senators’ veteran defenseman Marc Methot received from a slash by Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby, who was not penalized for the incident. Calgary’s Johnny Gaudreau also suffered a broken finger from repeated slashes from the Minnesota Wild in a game last November.
Among those who are expected to attend the meeting will include NHL executive VP and director of hockey operations Colin Campbell, the NHLPA’s Mathieu Schneider, and several general managers including Edmonton’s Peter Chiarelli and Dallas’ Jim Nill.
I have another idea…how about calling slashing as the rules define the infraction and it won’t be long before the players will stop pushing the envelope? That’s the reason why fans are so disgusted by how blatantly players committ penalties with no calls being made. Of course the players will continue to take more advantage. As a result the game is degrading and fans are more frustrated.
This article and the view taken by the author illustrates perfectly, the f(@&ed up, hot mess that is the policy which the NHL mandates to their officials and the handling of its very own rulebook. It also shows the mind numbing idiocy that are the policy makers of the league.
On one hand, you have a report come out from the league saying that on average, there are 80 slashes per game.
They process this information all the while thankful that they had enough people in the room to be able to count up to 80 using fingers and toes.
Finally, a lightbulb goes off in their head and they decide that yes…80 is a high number. Something needs to be done about this.
Ironically enough, it never even once enters their individual, or collective minds that something has already been done to prevent this. It is called the rulebook. The one which governs and outlines the specific infractions and the structure of discipline if you are one who commits one of these infractions.
So now, they are going to institute a rule within a rule.
I can understand however, why none of the policy makers or those who govern officiating didn’t think of this simple fix as I don’t think anybody who works for the National Hockey League has actually ever seen one of these “rulebooks” anywhere near the league office. I heard that when they were running low on them and it came time to print new ones, their copy machine broke and when repeatedly hitting it with sticks (ala the Fonzie Method and guide to fixing everything) didn’t solve the problem, they were stumped. Somebody then mentioned how the “Fonzie Method” is foolproof (obviously) to which they started discussing if they were applying the correct technique and whether they should use their hands instead, as did Fonzie himself. A minor skirmish had to be broken up over if it was more effective to use the phrase, “HEYYYYY” with their sticks or with their fists, just like “The Fonz” himself, although that minor skirmish was quickly smoothed over and only 7 people were hospitalized. One of them with what seemed to be an imprint of the heel of a shoe on his forehead. Later, a one shoed Mike Milbury declined to say if he was involved but did say that even if he wasn’t he supported the violence because, “Heyyy…you just don’t mess with The Fonz”.
After this skirmish the discussion then turned towards favorite episodes of Happy Days and why Ralph Mouth was the greatest actor of his generation. There was even discussion of trying to get him to host the NHL awards show although the idea was dismissed as a pipe dream given that a major star like Mr. Mouth would be in such high demand from various entities that the NHL would never stand a chance.
From what I hear, this idea has since been brought up every year when it comes time to talk about the annual awards show and the consensus of not having a snowballs chance in hell of landing such a huge fish as Ralph Mouth remains the same.
So that copy machine has never been fixed and the slashes have been escalating. The mindset of the NHL Rule Committee, Officials association and department of player safety has been twofold. They follow the lines of, (a direct quote from Bill Daly):
“If ya can’t stand the heat, build yourself a kitchen…and then get out of it. Yoiu don’t see a lot of heat in hockey anyways. See because fire, it tends to be hot. And that just might melt the ice which probably wouldn’t be good for the flow of a game. Although water flows quite well, so there may be something there which we haven’t thought of. I think this is a definite topic for the rule committee and it will be heavily discussed at the GM meetings”.
A reporter then asked what the second part was. A dumbfounded Bill Daly stared blankly lost in an inner debate of; “whether fire would melt the puck before a 60 minutes game ended once this new rule went into place and that someone should should fill out those ordering form things because they were gonna go through a lot more pucks than normal. Although they were out of ordering form thingies and only figured it out when they realized they were out and weren’t able to fill out an ordering form thing to order new ordering form things. I suppose someone should have made copies but that damn copy machine has been broken for almost 15 years now and if The Fonzie Method couldn’t fix it then Einstein couldn’t fix it”…and this thought triggered a lightbulb which reminded him of the second part of the policy the Rules committee and others had formed on the ever increasing rise of slashing in the game, which is;
“If the Fonz can take it, brother who the hell are you to complain. You think you’re BETTER than The Fonz”? Although the last part of the statement he didn’t like thinking about because it ALWAYS made his blood boil to think of people who thought they knew better than The Fonz himself.
Which brings us to where we are now. And in all seriousness, i find the obvious stupidity in my mock scenario above about as logical as the thought process the NHL is taking relative to this story.
So slashing, is in the rulebook
We see 80 slashes per game on average.
Instead of applying this rule as written…you know, the entire point of making rules in the first place…we are going to further convolute an already over convoluted definition of what once was a black and white rule (well, still is a black and white rule as written but the NHL no longer cares about the purpose behind the rules and why they are there to begin with). A rule that SHOULD be common sense which simply reminds us that hitting another human being with a wooden/composite hard forged heavy object at any type of velocity will in fact hurt said human very much, could cause significant injury and as such is not something that one should do to another being that it is quite a D-Bag thing to do.
And yes, that is why Brandon Dubinsky “uses the lumber” more frequent than most. Due to his lack of actual talent and being void of true skill, it is one of the least mentally challenging things in his arsenal. Plus, he gets the term, D-Bag confused with B-Dubi, and sometimes D-bag confused with Dubi itself which frusterates him as it makes him forget his own name and hitting another human being with a stick always makes him feel better.
The NHL misses the mark yet again. They pay lip service about safety and when confronted with overwhelming criticism of its policy, lack of enforcing said policy and then unable to justify or simply explain the policy itself, COMPLETELY misses the obvious solution and identifies the real problem not as slashing, but where the slash occurs as the culprit.
Typical.
The NHL does this with everything. They hype about the Crosby Methot slash and the inaction by game officials followed by the silence of the league itself brought about the conditions for the NHL to form its opinion on what the issue is.
And to the NHL the issue wasn’t the slash, but it was the attention being brought to a what many in the media were calling a nearly severed finger.
So because of that, the NHL is forging it’s defense and response that is meant to mitigate and deal with the severe (no pun intended) nature of the injury thinking that they cant have the correlation of such a seemingly gruesome injury (knowing how the press describes everything, not accurately but with hyperbole and inflammatory headline grabbers meant for generating clicks) with complete silence on their part.
Had somebodies knee been shredded by a stick that was grabbing headlines, we would see a different message being generated. An ankle? That is what the NHL would use in its press releases. Whatever is generating the inflammatory words is where the NHL is going to focus its P.R.
And to act only when confronted by overwhelming backlash is not acting. It is reacting. And every player should not trust the NHL to care about their safety when it is a policy of reaction rather than getting out ahead of this. Of only doing something when confronted by backlash over obvious and gross violations of those rules.
And folks, that sends the message to the player that slashing is just fine. Except near the hands. And only those deemed as incredibly violent ones will be penalized anywhere else on the body.
Which only increases the odds of a player getting seriously hurt by one of these slashes like Methot did.
To make the issue about the body part rather than the act itself is riddled with problems and disingenuous. It is a blatant hypocrisy in that you are only admitting something publically which everyone knows privately. That you are taking the rules which govern your league and diminishing them even further. That those rules aren’t really rules at all and are pretty much pointless by now.
But not seeing how one, contradicts another and the people who decide the future of this league make such convoluted decisions which follow no logic is disheartening.
Guess what NHL? You think 80 slashes per game is an issue? Well maybe if the players held any respect for that rulebook of yours, or maybe if you held any respect for that rulebook of yours, there wouldn’t be this gradual increase of pushing the envelope and you wouldn’t be in this mess.
Players are always going to get away with the most allowed to gain any sort of edge that they can. Always have, always will. That is why there is a need for absolute, clearly dictated rules. Because if not, in the name of seeing what they can get away with, that kind of fuzzy boundary eventually becomes the norm once everyone sees it is something that they can, indeed, now get away with. And that fuzzy boundary is pushed further. And further. And even further.
I feel bad for Methot. That was not a pretty thing to watch. But I do not villify Crosby either. I can’t reconsile a conscious decision of his saying that he is going to try to slice off the tip of a finger. Or see him react like a Lorena Bobbit type decision in the heat of the game.
I can see Crosby giving Methot any one of those 80 whacks which are an average in every game and the outcome of this one being the result that it was.
I blame the NHL. I hold them responsible for not implementing their own rules and telling officials to ignore them over sake of game management. It is ignorant and when actual legal gambling is involved, the NHL is actually creating a criminal act by directly attempting to influence the natural progression of the game by mandating advantages in attempts to make the game more television friendly. Or exciting by keeping the score closer.
All the while bemoaning the lack of scoring.
Slashing around the hand is not the issue.
Slashing is.
This is just a very small example of the issues facing the league in coming years and the thought process in which they have brought those issues upon themselves.
Just wait until the actual trial phase of the concussion lawsuits against the NHL really get going and the ammunition given to those who are suing in the form of public statements the league has made.
This isn’t going away and the league heads are to stupid to see themselves repeatedly following the same pattern of reaction over and over.