Day Zero for Colin Campbell | Cowhide and Rubber

Better late than never, as the saying goes.

NHL “disciplinarian” Colin Campbell today handed down an 8 game suspension to Anaheim Ducks defenseman James Wisniewski for this horrendous head shot:

I’m sure there are many hockey fans out there that are both puzzled and outraged with the decision. Why did he get 8 games while Matt Cooke got none? Why did he get 8 games while Downie got none? Why did he get 8 games while Ovechkin only got 2?

The fact is it doesn’t matter. Not anymore.

While Campbell sat by and blithely found reasons to dismiss dirty hits, or hand out limp 2-game bans, fans got angrier and angrier while the NHL made itself in to more and more of a laughing stock.

If there’s a silver lining to a hit like Wisniewski’s, it’s that Seabrook walked away from the hit, and it’s that Campbell acted swiftly and harshly. He didn’t dawdle over whether or not Cooke would or could be suspended, he didn’t hand out pathetic $1,000 fines, and he didn’t sit around spinning the wheel of justice until it landed on a small enough number of games fit for a star to miss. Clearly, when he wants to, he is able to act quickly instead of checking schedules for potential conflicts, and checking to see which way the wind is blowing.

On the night that an angry Bruins team was going to get their shot at retribution on Matt Cooke, Campbell levied what I hope to be the new standard for dirty hits, especially ones to the head. Now I’m sure that Bruins fans (and the Bruins themselves) are extra angry. If any one of their players gets excessive with Cooke, or one of the Penguins stars, you can bet that the suspension will be severe. It’s unfair, and on some level it’s wrong. Sometimes you’re the bug, and sometimes you’re the windshield. In a season where nothing has gone right, the Bruins are the bug.

I think fans have to understand that Campbell has probably figured out that he’s made a fairly ugly mess of things and that he has to put a stop to it at some point. With guys having their heads smashed on a nightly basis, the time to act is now. In fact, the time to act was long ago. The players are as disjointed a group as there is, there’s no sense in looking to them for logical behavior or coherent action. To a man, they keep blowing the same hot air: “I didn’t intend to hurt him / I don’t go out there to injure”. Sure guys. Then why does it keep happening? And why do you guys keep acting as a roadblock to getting new rules in place? If the players can’t or won’t control themselves, then the league has to do it for them. Marc Savard, Brian Campbell, Brent Seabrook, and Sidney Crosby have all been subject to a range of questionable hits over the past week. You can even lump Seabrook’s questionable hit on Perry in there if you want. That’s 5 guys of Olympic and all-star calibre in a week. Two will miss a long period of time, 1 is yet to be determined, and 2 were lucky to walk away unscathed. At that rate there won’t be any stars left to sell the game!

Colin Campbell needed to swallow his pride, and start acting like someone who has the teeniest clue about what he’s doing. I believe he did that today, and if it’s at all possible, he deserves some credit. If 8 games becomes the new baseline for taking a run at someone’s head (heck, even if 5 games is the new baseline; Wisniewski is a repeat offender after all), then Campbell can restore some measure of faith and credibility by sticking to it, regardless of the name on the back of the jersey. He will never fully erase the years of futility and impotency that he will forever be known for, but he can do the game some good if he finally does the right thing and get serious with cheap shot artists. Players don’t care about 1 or 2 game suspensions. That’s a short break from a long year. The lost salary is just a few nights out where they take it easy instead of going all out. Start suspending guys for 10% of the season and the picture becomes clearer. Get these guys off the ice, and hit them in the wallet. That’s where it hurts most. Suddenly, they’re not thinking about just cutting back to make up for lost pay; they’re actually reeling from the financial hit. It may take a while, but I’m certain that a player with violence on his mind will think twice about recklessly hitting an unsuspecting opponent if he reprograms himself to understand that he won’t just miss a game or two, but 5 or 10.

Where do you stand? Do you think Colin Campbell finally got one right?

http://www.thecheckingline.com Prax

Kyle is right by saying that none of the other hits matter in this decision. To a certain degree, the NHL shouldn’t be handing out suspensions or holding out on suspensions simply because someone before him got one or not. This was a dirty hit with the fullest of malicious intent and it needed to be punished.

And if you look at it and say ”only eight games?”, think about this. The Ducks have 12 games left, and they will go two thirds of those games without one of their top four defensemen. While the 8 points back that they are seemed like a tough hill to climb before, it’s now insurmountable. This suspension costs the Ducks any minor chance they had left at making the playoffs, and that’s significant.

Forget what other hits happened that night or before, this one needed to be punished, and it did.

Maybe Campbell was just fed up.

Anyway, I’m sick of talking about headshots. With only a couple hand fulls of games left in the season we should be focusing on all the great nailbiting hockey going on, not this crap.
http://www.cowhideandrubber.com Kyle

@Chris – No doubt when McKenzie speaks, people listen and the head office is probably no exception. It’s also important to note that it was a second devastating hit against a Blackhawk defenseman in less than a week. I don’t expect Campbell to get everything right on the same day. But I think he got the Wisniewski one right. It will make people take notice at the very least and get the hamster wheel in some heads turning. Like I said, Campbell hasn’t and likely can’t change his legacy, but it shouldn’t prevent him from firing back some serious shots of his own. Establish a baseline and start working on the consistency thing.

@Brian – Nice to see you here! Something has changed over the past 15-20 years. I remember Rock ‘em Sock ‘em videos as mostly open ice hits and hip checks. The thing that’s happened in the past 20 years is the equipment, the size and strength of the players, and the lack of respect that has seemingly crept in to the game.

The part that some will struggle with is that they will continually refer to what Campbell did and did not do in comparison to what he did with Wisniewski. I think that’s the wrong approach. Completely. At *some* point, a new standard would have had to be set. And when that happened, people were going to talk about it in reference to previous suspensions and non-suspensions. That’s why I named this blog “day zero”. If Campbell reverts to his old ways and starts doling out 1 and 2 game bans for rotten hits, then I guess he will have wasted my breath and your bandwidth. Until then, thanks to you both for reading!
Brian Layne

I haven’t seen one of Don Cherry’s Rock’Em Sock’Em videos in years but I’m sure if I watched one again, it would have a lot of open ice hits with guys that had their head down. “Keep your head up and your stick on the ice!” doesn’t have the same ring when the head shots are happening daily.

Whether the amount of time for suspension was right or wrong, I agree that it was a good move. With a lot of teams making a final push for the playoffs, it’s a statement that says “I dare you to hit someone in the head!” A headshot in the next week can keep you out of the first round. A shot in the playoffs might mean you go golfing until October.

Incidentally, if the NHL wants to figure out what a clean hit is, they may have to go back to video replays of the 70′s when nobody wore helmets but there seemed to be an unsaid pact that you didn’t deliberately drive a guys head into the ice or boards…. but you could still punch their teeth in.
http://www.thehockeyprogram.net Chris Wassel

Nope he got it wrong again…because he missed the Pelley hit and only reacted likely when TSN’s Mr. MacKenzie called it “the grand slam of hits”. If they called the hit on Perry earlier, maybe it does not come to that.