The NHL as a ruling committee is looking like more of a joke everyday. Their reasoning in handing out punishments always seems to defy logic, but it’s the way the NHL handles the PR backlash from their decisions that makes the whole sideshow so comical.
The NHL has finally decided to crack down on numero uno goon Matt Cooke of the Pittsburgh Penguins and suspended the left-winger for the final ten games of the regular season. Agreed, the suspension does send a strong message about how the league is going to handle cheap shots to the head going forward, but the whole thing comes off as a bit anti-climactic.
Where was this kind of suspension last year when Cooke was trying to pop Marc Savard’s head off like a grape or a month ago when he committed the nasty face-into-boards hit on Blue Jackets defenseman Fedor Tyutin? Cooke only got four games for the vicious blow to Tyutin and avoided a suspension altogether for his hit on Savard.
The league’s been far too inconsistent with their disciplinary actions and is always late to the party when it comes to timely decisions. The medical documentation of how damaging and life-lasting concussions can be has been piling up over the years and was always available to the NHL as reference material. Instead of acknowledging the problem, it appeared as though the NHL was fully content on playing the stupid card while desperately hoping the problem would go away on its own.
I mean, as of right now, doesn’t the NHL’s message kind of read “We change our minds. Concussions aren’t that cool after all.”
And when the NHL disciplinary committee finally brings down the hammer and lays down the law, after they declare their “monumental” decision, the group always seems to creepily back away into the shadows like Count Dracula without answering anyone’s questions. The public always wants to know about the content of the committee’s deliberations and how they end up reaching such uneven verdicts, but unlike the NFL and NBA, this premier hockey league has always shied away from the media during circumstances such as these.
Even though the NHL is in the center ring of the circus, the punch line in all this mess has to be Mario Lemieux. Could anyone have an emptier message or is more laughable than the former NHL superstar right now? On one end of the spectrum, Mario is preaching to the fan base from his executive suite about striving for player safety, and on the other end, he’s harboring the biggest criminal in the league and has his star forward and arguably the best player in the NHL (Sydney Crosby) sidelined indefinitely due to a couple concussions he suffered back in January.
We all know Lemieux still has a lot of pull in this league, so why hasn’t he been whipping those NHL angel wings around the room and getting more done when it comes to player safety? If he still wanted to be considered a major pillar in this league, there needs to be more doing with Mario. Less talky talky.
After heaps of pressure mounted up, the NHL finally did something about their ugliest smudge, but was it really enough? Anyone in his or her right mind could have made this decision blindfolded for the NHL years ago. For god sakes, is this was the movie Slapshot, Matt Cooke would be skating alongside Ogie Ogilthorpe and the rest of the Syracuse Bulldogs.
No one needs that kind of crude hockey violence in such a professional league (that’s what the AHL is for) and it should stay in the movies where it belongs. Hockey players losing their front teeth and smiling about it is great entertainment for the whole family and hilarious to watch. Players shooting themselves in the chest because their concussions caused too much pain and depression over the years, not so much.
—–Seth Newton
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