Michael Woods
There are too many hits to the head in the National Hockey League, and they have to stop.
Don’t get me wrong—I love a good, clean body check almost as much as a beautiful goal. A crushing open-ice hit can change a game’s momentum in an instant.
But as Philadelphia Flyers forward Mike Richards’s crushing hit that left Florida’s David Booth motionless on the ice last week shows, some hits the rulebook says are legal have no business in the game.
There isn’t a rule in the NHL that directly addresses hits to the head. Most bases are covered—players can be sent to the box for hitting from behind, elbowing, charging and a host of other infractions. But some of the most damaging hits—a shoulder to the head—have no consequences.
The instigator penalty is part of the problem. Since it was introduced in 1992, bench-clearing brawls have ceased, but so has the players’ ability to police themselves. Getting rid of that and instituting stiff fines for bench-clearing brawls would be a start.
But more needs to be done. The NHL should introduce a rule directly banning hits to the head.
At the last NHL general managers’ meeting in March, then-NHL Players’ Association executive director Paul Kelly said three-quarters of his players favoured banning hits to the head.
The NHL, though, is dragging its feet on the issue. Colin Campbell, who’s in charge of discipline, has implored players to keep their heads up when skating into a “hockey area.” That’s good advice, headhunters shouldn’t have licence to do whatever they want if a player takes a glance down at the puck.
It’s hard for referees to determine a player’s intent, but I don’t see a problem with giving referees licence to determine whether a hit to the head was a play on the puck or an extraneous act.
Old-time hockey fans go with the tired adage of keeping one’s head up, but the game has changed. Players are faster, bigger and equipment is much harder.
Science has progressed, too. Multiple hits to the head have been linked to clinical depression later in life, Parkinson’s disease, memory loss and slowed cognition.
The NHL has a duty to protect its most important assets. Until deliberate hits to the head are banned, their negligence will continue to put players in harm’s way.
Amrit Ahluwalia
Hockey can be a beautiful sport, perfectly balancing caution and abandon, reserve and aggression, speed and balance. But at its core, hockey is a brutal sport that has a way of enforcing its own rules—referees or no referees.
You don’t run the other team’s goalie because someone will hit you. You don’t slash the other team’s star player, because someone will hit you. And you definitely keep your head up, because otherwise someone will hit you very, very hard. Of course, this wasn’t always the status quo.
Once upon a time, if you hit anyone on the other team in the head, intentional or not, you’d find yourself in a fight. So no one did it, not even Philadelphia’s Broad Street Bullies of the 1970s. Hockey used to be able to govern itself. But since the instigator rule came into effect, pests and bullies have been able to run freely around the ice, making “clean dirty hits” on smaller and more skilled players without fear of retribution.
The answer is clear; don’t get rid of hits to the head. Address the problem directly. The NHL needs to recognize it has made a mistake, and revoke the instigator rule.
Do you think Flyers captain Mike Richards would have hammered Panthers winger David Booth last week if he had known an enforcer would have him by the scruff immediately afterwards?
Instead, Booth lay alone on the ice, referees interjected and stopped hockey’s self-governance from occurring, and Richards went on to play another game.
The sport is being kneecapped by the league. The historical and natural flow of things is destroyed, and there’s no reason for it.
Fighting is hockey’s great equalizer, allowing star players to remain safe and enforcers to keep pests in their place. Wayne Gretzky never would have been safe in today’s league, because Dave Semenko wouldn’t be able to protect him.
My point is this; hockey is an aggressive—at times brutal—sport. It has the capacity to govern itself, but not the ability to do so. Referees and Colin Campbell don’t do nearly as well at ensuring opponents keep their hits clean as an enforcer with a chip on his shoulder.
In short, be safe, keep your head up, but let hockey run itself and get rid of the instigator. Trust me, the headhunters will be rooted out and gone from the game faster than you can say “clean dirty hit.”
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