Tag Archives: Matt Cooke


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Violence & Headshot Blog Compilation

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There’s been an unprecedented amount of chatter, much of it of the loud, profane and passionate variety surrounding the Chara/Pacioretty incident.

While the hit was a shock to everyone, it’s important to use this incident as a spearhead for league-wide change, and not just an opportunity for Habs fans to get “justice for their guy”. While some justice would have been nice (considering Campbell’s quote after suspending Ovechkin last season), that no supplemental discipline was given to Chara may be a blessing in disguise. If he had received a game or three, there would still be a large amount of fans dissatisfied with the decision. Upon serving the meagre suspension, the refrain would have reverted to “he served his suspension, move along”.

Instead, the league has flung the door wide open to criticism on their insane views of what is tolerated as “part of the game” and what isn’t.

I’ve been very, very vocal about the whole situation on twitter, and it’s led to many “accusations” that I’m only this upset because it’s happened to a Canadiens player. While my anger is certainly intensified this time around (and to be fair, a broken neck and severe concussion is as horrific an injury as we’ve seen in the NHL since the Bertuzzi/Moore incident of several years ago. Marc Savard’s accumulated head traumas are certainly the most profound for any player since Moore) there’s no doubt that I’ve made my stance and opinion on the state of the NHL very clear. I may not have listed every incident, but you’ll get the point.

Below is a compilation of blog posts that I’ve written over the past couple years that prove (I hope) just how disgusted I am with the league and their ineptitude to properly deal with headshots.

I’m not sure how I’d qualify it, but the oldest blog entry on this list most closely mirrors the way I feel today about Pacioretty. This tells me that despite the introduction of rule 48 to NHL play, that the sport of hockey is still nowhere near getting to the root of this frightening problem.

As Canadiens fans prepare to protest at the Bell Center prior to the game on March 15th, I can only speak for myself when I say that I hope the focus of  the protest centers around the fact that the NHL now expects their players to take far too many risks and that they need to get serious about suspensions and safety. Hockey has always been a fast, dangerous sport. The lack of respect among players, and the flaccid, impotent rules (as well as the disciplinary office) only make it a more hazardous environment.

Look What You’ve Done, Gary

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If you follow the pulse of NHL chatter on Twitter, you “learn” a lot of “things” about the wonderful Commissioner of the NHL. For example, did you know:

  • That Gary Bettman hates Canada with the burning rage of the dual Tatooine suns?
  • That Gary Bettman is pulling strings – as I type this – to ensure that the Penguins, Capitals, Coyotes, and Red Wings, are all going to win the Cup this year?
  • That Gary Bettman has Sidney Crosby pyjamas, a Sidney Crosby poster above his bed, and a picture of Sidney Crosby in a heart-shaped locket around his neck?

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, and as much of a lie telling doofus as Gary Bettman is, clearly much of the hate is off-the-wall. He’s brought it on himself, but sometimes we get a little ahead of ourselves.

But the League’s top executive, and his team of cronies (hi, Colin! hi, Bill!) has really done it this time. For years fans have been waiting for the NHL to do something about the growing number of head shots and concussions, to little or no avail. Many assumed that if Sidney Crosby were to ever go down with a head injury, the league’s head office inhabitants would turn themselves inside-out in order to implement some sort of rule to curb headshots. They can’t lose the poster-child, can they? Surely the NHL’s offices would collapse like Barad-Dur if the Golden Boy were to miss extended action, right?

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Lo, and behold that time is upon us.

As you know by now, Sidney Crosby was clobbered by David Steckel and Victor Hedman in consecutive games shortly after the calendar rolled over to 2011, and has yet to return to action. In fact, he has yet to resume light exercise. Whispers are now gaining steam, leading Globe and Mail columnist (and my favorite sports journalist / sports writer) Stephen Brunt to reveal on the Team 990′s airwaves that he has heard that Crosby may not be back at all this year.

Perfect. The NHL’s best player, the face of the league and the spearhead of many marketing efforts *may* miss the playoffs (and scuttle Bettman’s chances to further line the rafters at the Pens’ shiny new arena with Cup banners). Oops!

I’m not saying that any kind of legislation or rule would have protected the league’s top player, who was in the midst of one of the best seasons we’ve seen in a while, from injury. What I am saying is that now the discussion has just became a lot more complicated for Gary and his band of merry incompetents. Complicated, not because the solutions are difficult to pin down and implement (they are complex) but because he’s brought a mess to his doorstep that was entirely avoidable by merely taking their collective heads out of the sand. It’s better to do something than to do nothing. The blindside hit rule (rule 48) is a nice start, but it’s only that – a start. That the refs still can’t consistently enforce that rule points to the fact that the league really isn’t all that focused on making things better. The way the NHL has approached this issue, they’ve made it sound like curbing head shots is akin to achieving time travel. Maybe Emmett “Doc” Brown is available for consultation? My money is on the NHL cleverly ambushing him on October 21, 2015, since they’ll know exactly where he will be.

For argument’s sake, if they decide to crack down and institute real measures (rules, consequences, assessments, treatments) to get rid of head shots and lessen the severity of concussions, people that despise Crosby and Bettman (there are plenty in both camps) will say it was only done to protect the “Chosen One”. Bruins fans in particular may bristle at this after one of their stars, Marc Savard was decimated by Matt Cooke. If the boneheads continue to drag their heels (as well as their knuckles), they’ll be accused of not caring about the stars, the fans, the product, or the game. His continued reluctance to apply common sense in the face of a terrible rash of recent head injuries has now landed him squarely between a rock and a hard place. Maybe Gary can have a sit-down with a really brave guy who knows a thing or two about just that.

If I were Bettman, I’d rather suffer the consequences of being labeled as the former instead of the latter. He’s gone way beyond the point of getting credit for being “proactive” on the issue.

Your move, Gary.

Day Zero for Colin Campbell

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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:

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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?

NHL General Managers Finally Act on Headshots. Sort Of.

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I suppose we should be glad that the NHL’s General Managers meeting in Florida has finally produced some concrete action against headshots. It seems not a week goes by where somebody in the world of hockey gets their head smashed by an opponent’s shoulder or elbow, or is shoved head-first in to the boards at high speed. These types of hits are tough to watch, and they often have devastating effects. Some of the after effects of these hits are still unknown to doctors, which, to me makes them even more dangerous.

Frankly, I’m appalled that the NHL took this long to investigate the matter. For years the old guard stood there and claimed that by wiping out headshots, you would be taking the physicality out of hockey. I know I’m not alone in finding that statement to be absurd. Since when does ensuring the safety of player mean that you are promoting the “pansification” of hockey, as Mike Milbury puts it?

How utterly embarassing were things within the NHL before today?

On the way to work yesterday, I read a story by Jeff Z. Klein and Stu Hackel regarding Matt Cooke’s hit on Bruins center Marc Savard, and it had a couple of quotes that worry me greatly.

“the question really is, when a shoulder makes contact with the head, is that going to be termed illegal – because right now, it’s legal” – Colin Campbell

In reference to blatant head shots, like the Ted Green/Wayne Maki incident of 1969 and Dave Brown’s cross-check to the head of Tomas Sandstrom in 1987 Campbell has this to say:

“We don’t have these things anymore….we’re talking about cross-checks to the head, sucker punches to the head.”

Campbell claims that league crack downs have eliminated this sort of thing.

So what is the problem with these quotes exactly?

On the first, it sounds like he has no intention of punishing a hit that is currently deemed as legal. I guess he really can’t and shouldn’t try to invent punishments at random. But is there not a penalty for intent to injure? Cooke is a repeat offender, after all. You can make the strong case that he did precisely what he intended to do. At best, Campbell may give another slap on the wrist for hitting an opponent while defenseless. In the end, although Cooke is a repeat offender, he probably won’t be penalized very harshly, if at all. That’s pathetic, because there is no justification for letting those sorts of hits go unpunished.

On the second quote, it appears as though Campbell’s memory is fading. He says that we no longer see cross checks to the head, or sucker punches. But wait a minute…didn’t he suspend Daniel Briere for cross checking Scott Hannan in the head in November 2009? Yes he did. He also suspended Danny Carcillo for sucker punching Matt Bradley in December of 2009. Yes Colin, indeed we don’t see those things anymore.

Did we not just witness an Olympic tournament that displayed the best of what hockey has to offer? And we saw it without headshots, without fighting and without making hockey and less tough than we all like seeing it. So what is so difficult about instituting a ban on head shots? If the best players in the world can avoid knocking each other’s heads off, why can’t other players follow suit?

It is utterly shocking to me that the General Managers, and the player’s union did not take this more seriously before now. The players are what sell the game, and they’ve been dropping like flies in recent years. Colin Campbell, for his part, has not helped matters at all. His wildly inconsistent disciplining has only served to exacerbate the problem, and frustrate fans who have come to label his process of determining appropriate punishment as “the Wheel of Justice”. Want an example of what I mean by wildly inconsistent? In November 2009, former Canadiens forward Georges Laraque was suspended for 5 games for his knee-on-knee hit with Red Wings defenseman Niklas Kronwall. Then, just a few days ago, Campbell saw it fit to give Minnesota Wild goon Derek Boogaard just 2 games for a similar knee-on-knee hit. You’d expect this sort of discrepancy if Boogaard was a star in the league, but he’s far from it. He’s the type of player that Commissioner Gary Bettman has been trying to squeeze out of the league with instigator penalties and rule changes that focus on speed and skill. It’s that sort of inconsistency and randomness that has dogged Campbell for years now.

Today the league has finally put something in writing with regards to blindside hits to the head. A panel of General Managers came up with the following language to define the new rule against headshots:

“A lateral, back pressure or blindside hit to an opponent where the head is targeted and or the principal point of contact is not permitted.

A violation of the above will result in a minor or major penalty and shall be reviewed for possible supplemental discipline.”

Is it just me, or is that not nearly enough? Like I mentioned, I suppose I should be happy that something has been done, but what is with these half measures? Like Major League Baseball when it first instituted anti-performance enhancing drug rules, this penalty is obviously nothing but lip service. It feels like this rule was put in place just to quiet people down. Does it make sense that a marginal hooking call, or an accidental delay of game call is given the same penalty as a headshot that could sideline a guy for months, as it did with David Booth? Why could they not have taken a serious stand? In my view, a more appropriate penalty – one that shows that the GMs care and are serious – would be a 5 minute major, a game misconduct, and an automatic review with the Wheel of Justice, who would presumably have less reason to be so random.

What I don’t think will work is lifting the instigator rule. While I don’t like the rule at all, I don’t think it changes anything. Instead of guys having their heads scrambled by an elbow, or shoulder, they would instead get it scrambled by fists, as fighting would likely increase with the fear of being penalized and tossed from the game for instigating removed.

Personally, I don’t think today’s implementation will change anything. The NHL does not seem to have taken any steps to educate the players about respect, and it does not seem to want to look at the issue of body armor as weapons. These are 2 more items that the league and player’s union should look at. The Rock ‘em Sock ‘em culture still exists, and guys are not only looking to separate the man from the puck, they are looking to intimidate and take opponents out. The idea of “sending a message” continues to escalate itself, and until the players learn that their speed, and power has exceeded the skull’s ability to protect the brain, I don’t see much changing. I still think someone will be crippled or killed before the NHL gets serious.

Because the nature of concussions and brain trauma is not yet fully understood, I think the league needs to swallow its pride and be safe rather than sorry. It won’t ruin or change the game. Perhaps I’m a softy, but 30 years from now, I want to be able to see and hear today’s players take part in ceremonies and interviews, without the need of using a walker, and with their full, vibrant memories intact.

How do you feel about the league’s first step to stem the tide of headshots? Are you satisfied that the league has finally done something, or is this just nothing more than public relations?


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