March 2012: And, We Still Have Hits From Behind...

Amazingly, the answer is not icing. Though I'm sure a certain broken record and the GMs who apply bandaid solutions twice in any given season wish it were.

Yesterday, Tyler Myers was suspended for 3 games following a blatant hit from behind on Scott Gomez, late in Monday's contest.

This was a good step. But as one example, it also helps to explain why players like Tyler Myers even make these hits in the first place.

Myers, you see was rightly suspended, but inadequately punished during the game itself. The team that suffered the foul was not properly compensated for the dirty play, instead the Sabres next three opponents and playoff rivals will be. His punishment, in case you missed it, was two minutes for boarding. To those of you who missed the beginning of the season and the "crackdown" on dirty hits, this hit would have been punished more harshly back then.

My issue with this is the simple fact that the over-the-top nature of the hit was apparent right from the start. The announcers caught it before the replay, the players all kind of stopped for a moment. Why then did the referees, supposedly trained in the ways and rules of hockey miss assigning the same penalty that was assigned earlier in the season? Why did they make a hit that was a clear suspendable offense (3 more games than the unblemished record of Chara shows) the equivalent of a puck over the glass (or a split second of Pacioretty stick around a waist?

Shanahan was in Florida touting his first year in charge of the discipline ship. Apparently, he showed some statistical analysis of penalty calls and video evidence to show how his "crackdown" has paid dividends.

It's a sham.

If the data is penalties, it gets skewed by this very practice. Want less evidence of dirty hits in the penalty records? Tell them to call less penalties. The Myers hit might have been an example of this were it not for the suspension correcting the error made in the game. To pretend that the league corrects all the legitimate calls it misses in this way would be foolhardy thinking indeed.

It's all smoke and mirrors with the NHL.

Shanahan and his videos, data based on penalized hits (not data on illegal hits penalized or not), twisted messaging on concussion data:

"The league also reported that man-games lost to concussions is up significantly, but the number of concussions are roughly the same as last season.

The number of concussions caused by accidental collisions and fights were down and those caused by legal and illegal hits are up."

Why bother mentioning the other data in the same breath. If the number of concussions from illegal hits are up0, they are up. It matters little that accidental collisions have come down to even out the record in Shanahan's favour. And showing videos of guys stepping out of the way in isolated cases is a nonsense that only serves to distract.

There are more concussions despite the "crackdown"? This should be seen as nothing but an epic failure. Rather than tooting it's own little horn, the NHL should be asking why their methods have failed to produce results that are good enough, indeed, any results at all.

I have a theory on the matter, and it relates very much to the case of Tyler Myers: the consequences for the hits that cause injury are simply too light. What's more they are getting lighter.

Sure, Myers has 3 games to sit, and it may cost the Sabres. But in the game where he could and should have been punished right away, he cost his team 15 seconds of PK and ended up scoring the winning goal. The suspension is apt, but there's no reason to have allowed a GWG in the interim of hit and punishment complete.

At the beginning of the "crackdown", Myers would have been sent to the dressing room. We all know that the rules change over a season as the NHL systematically moves into playoff mode. Sure they kept their numbers up this year with early penalty calls, but the end of season is still the dangerous hitting ground because of the loose refereeing.

So the NHL has to face two facts:

1) Players and teams don't really care enough about 3 game suspensions, 2 minute penalties and $2,500 fines to stop and think the way Shanahan's cherry-picked videos purport they do

2) The NHL's continued insistence on a season of two rulebooks lends itself to plenty of experimetation by the players in the game.


Until the league sets some firm rules with punishments that sting teams (stress teams, because individual players will only care if their teams make them care) and apply those rules consistently through the entire length of a season, these embarrassing problems will survive.

Right now, the league is that lazy patient who takes half his course of antibiotics only to complain to his doctor time after time about the troubles with resistant strains being encountered. Owning up to its own negligence is the only way out of this problem for the NHL.

Less face-saving video displays, more doses Mr. Shanahan. You won't get to what's ailing without a more concerted effort.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Maybe it's too early to deliver a verdict on Brendan Shanahan as VP Discipline. But as he stepped onto the rule-making ice for his first shift, he did very little to distinguish himself from those who came before.

This looks more a waiver wire addition for the NHL change machine than a blockbuster pick up.

It started well enough in August with the re-introduction of the Research, Development and Orientation Camp. At that camp, there were all kinds of things being tested, variations on icing, equipment tweaks, powerplays that last the duration. Changes that could have made significant differences to the game.

Kudos to the new guys for looking at these things in the first place.

It's perhaps not surprising that the more radical ideas on the table are staying there, for now. The game is growing in popularity (or so the book cookers say) and there isn't really a noticeable crisis in the goalscoring department that requires radical action.

But there were certain changes that needed to be made. Foremost among them was to do whatever it takes to eliminate the unnecessary injuries that occur when players hit other players around the side of the head. The action that was thought to be firm last year left us with memories of devastating hits with summer retirements and careers in jeopardy.

So when the announcement that the NHL has changed Rule 48 (the now infamous Illegal hits to the head rule), one could be excused for being underwhelmed with the conviction.

The full explanation of the changes is here. But the gist of it is this:

1) Last year, hits to the head were penalized when they were blindside or lateral. This year, those words have been removed. All hits will be penalized. (One step ahead)

Oh wait, it's actually up to the referee. Couldn't commit that far (step back).

2) Last year, the penalty was at least severe in theory. A major penalty would be assessable. This year, they deemed that too harsh, so it's now a minor call (several steps back?)


The net change is that the penalty is lessened, but the penalizable offence is broader. However, since we know the referees that have been given the freedom of interpretation (heaven forbid they weren't for the sake of safety) we can imagine the cockamamie explanations on the way for the unpenalized hits coming up this year.

It's a very weak response to a very serious issue. A completely unnecessary part of the game could be removed with leadership and conviction and fairly simple penalties, yet the team at the top bottled it.


Now consider their similar superficial changes to the boarding rule where they changed wording (vulnerable to defenseless).


Is anyone else worried that Shanahan might not be bold enough to break the establishment? Does anyone believe he even wants to?


If the real threat of retirement before 25 for the best player to come along in years is not enough to light a fire under these guys, what is? I think we all know the horrible answer to that question.

Let's hope an outcry, or maybe just some good sense from the players themselves (pipe dream), ends this nonsense before that day.

Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back

In the wake of announcements made by Gary Bettman about the seriousness that the NHL is going to start ascribing to head hits, this week the NHL Wheel of Justice assessed Dany Heatley 2 games for a deliberate (if not very injurious) elbow to the head of Steve Ott, Lecavalier was handed a game misconduct for a deliberate high-stick to PK Subban’s head, and even Bruin Brad Marchand is getting a suspension for an unpenalized play. Given that the GMs have just finished a meeting specifically addressing concussions and head hits (among other things), it’s worth asking whether the league has done enough to address what a lot of hockey minds seem to think is a key issue facing the game today?

Ken Dryden, Habs legend and one of the more intelligent players to ever grace the game, had a very smart piece in the Globe and Mail last Friday where he compares today’s perceptions of head hits to yesteryear’s perceptions of the health risks of smoking (i.e. none) and asks the question: "How could we be so stupid?" This is a valid point, and 20 or 30 years from now I think many doctors and family members will be asking the same question. It is all too easy to think of our players as gladiators and heroes, and that head trauma is just part of earning their stripes; part of the the job.

This certainly seems to be the outlook of the NHL executive committee, with very little about head hits and concussions coming of this week’s GM meeting. What we got was a very public 5-point "action plan" from Gary Bettman after the first day, which seemingly calmed sponsors by making it sound like the league is really going to do something. My feelings are obviously a little mixed on the subject. I certainly hate their data on the source of concussions – especially the category labelled "accidental hits." According to their classifications, the Chara hit would have been "accidental" simply because it wasn’t ruled as intentional (i.e. suspension-worthy) by the executive, and I don’t think this provides a very meaningful representation of the data.

One point I was very happy with, and that was the new protocol for determining what constituted a potential concussion threat and how the teams are expected to react. Clear rules are set for what scenario requires an intervention by the team doctor, and the player is removed to “a quiet place free from distraction” for examination with a validated acute concussion assessment tool. These are good steps, most of all because they are clear, logical, and will probably improve the prognosis for players with concussions dramatically. In fact, the only way that this could be better is if doctors had an obligation to share data from tests (maybe at season’s end) for use in evaluating how various rule or equipment changes affect concussion rates.

The rest of the list I’m less excited about. The first item is for Brendan Shanahan to lead an investigation into whether equipment size can be reduced without compromising safety. I think that the answer is a resounding “yes.” Equipment size has grown rather dramatically over the past three decades, mostly in the name of player safety. However, I wonder whether this has backfired somewhat; protection against higher forces seems to have encouraged harder hits, and likely leads to less forgiving impacts between players. It is important to remember that no equipment can protect a player completely from injury, however, and that changes made at a cultural level might be more effective in reducing concussions.

The second, related, item is the naming of Joe Nieuwendyk, Rob Blake, Steve Yzerman and Brendan Shanahan to a committee investigating concussions and concussion-related issues. I have tremendous respect for all of these men as hockey players, but have less faith their ability to ask smart, testable questions about why concussions have been on the rise, and supervise the data collection and analysis required for this job. I’m biased, being a scientist, but I’d like to see people who do this kind of analysis for a living doing this work.

Which brings me to the next point, which is the hiring of an independent safety consulting team to tour the 30 NHL arenas to ensure they conform to the highest safety standards. My question is: how is this not a routine procedure for the league? The same could be said for the last point, which is penalizing teams as a whole for repeated offences by multiple players, though I can’t find anything saying 1) how many offences it takes to become a “repeat offender, or 2) how many “repeated offenders” would qualify as enough for a fine or other punishment.

What I hate most about this is that, unlike the new head injury protocol, it doesn’t seem to be clear, logical, or structured. It requires on-the-fly judgement calls that will lead to inconsistent rulings from referees and the disciplinary committee, which is why so many of us refer to them as the "Wheel of Justice." Inconsistency and judgement calls are ruining the punitive structure of the league both on the ice and in suspensions (although our friend Down Goes Brown seems to have the suspensions figured out). Decades of psychology research have shown that if punishment is not consistent, it doesn’t change behaviour, and that’s what we’re seeing on the ice.

My dad and I were talking about this last night, and came up with a good example: in the old days (for me this means the 1980s), 3 steps and leaving your feet meant a whistle and 2 minutes for charging. Now, charging is a rather abstract concept because, as Colin Campbell freely admits in his emails (remember those?), referees are more or less expected to be inconsistent by making calls based on the score, the number of previous penalties and the flow of the game. Bad judgement by the referee on some stickplay between Subban and Lacavalier in front of the net last night led to frustration and the eventual 2-handed blow to Subban’s face that saw Vinny ejected. It never should have gone that far, even if it meant 2 minutes for PK and none for Lacavalier.

I think overall the league has taken some steps in the right direction by introducing independent safety consultants, clear criteria for high-risk hits, and protocols for how deal with these hits. However, we’ve been taking a lot of steps in the wrong direction over the last couple years in terms of man-games lost to injury. Until the punitive structures are made more severe and consistent, I think we’ll continue to watch that stat rise.