NHL Headshots

Ok, I have to say that I am getting a little tired of this subject being brought up week after week after week. Not because I want people to accept the fact that head shots are a part of the game, because they aren't. Just as Don Cherry has said over and over, there is a fundamental lack of respect for the health and well-being of the other players on the ice that wasn't this bad back in the rough and tumble 70s and 80s!

What I want to know is how much of this is enough to make the league take action? I mean, this problem has gone back for a while. Marty McSorely , Todd Bertuzzi, Chris Simon. And now we have even more, it seems like every single week! Just now we have another one where Marc Savard ends up getting carted off on a stretcher. . Worst part of this is that there wasn't even a penalty called on this play. How can we possibly have that happen here?!

Suspensions are only a part of what needs to happen with this sort of hit. This sort of hit has no place in the game! I am totally with Don Cherry with his explanation of why things have gone downhill with this. With the fight instigator penalty in play, it makes it impossible for any type of policing. If you knew that you had to fight the other team's biggest and toughest guy if you took a cheap shot on one of these players, would you really do it? Probably not! But now, with the fight instigator penalty, that makes this impossible, because if the tough guy comes after the other guy, they get the fighting major, and extra 2 minutes, and a game misconduct. That changes the game.

So what is there to do? Outrage of this will only do so much. We can all sit back and say that these are gutless cheap shots that have no place in the game until the end of time, but that isn't going to stop it from happening. 5 game suspensions won't stop this from happening. When will the NHL, and Colin Campbell specifically, take a stand and do more than just say that this has to stop. We can get rid of the fight instigator penalty, and allow players to police each other again. Ban those types of hits entirely and impose HEAVY suspensions on players that make this kind of hit, with the potential of lifetime bans on players who are repeat offenders. This is one of the only ways that I can think of to stop this from happening. If the respect for the other player's health isn't there, at least they may be stopped with concern for their own career. That way, they would have nobody to blame but themselves once they are taken out of the league.

The bottom line in all of this is that every time things like this happen, it puts the NHL in the news for the wrong reason, and people are more turned off from what is an amazing game because of the actions of a few thugs who can't control themselves. We all need to work together to get this sort of thing out of the game. Come on Colin Campbell, Gary Bettman, you're the people who set the standards. DO MORE THAN JUST TALK!!!