The emotional argument for banning all headshots from NHL hockey
When Hockey Consultant was a fifteen-year-old avid hockey fan (emphasize on FAN) back in the late nineties, her team was the Pittsburgh Penguins. Those Penguins were led by Hockey Consultant’s all-time favorite player, a right winger named Jaromir Jagr. At the time, Jagr’s chief rival for the title of “best hockey player in the world” was a center from the Philadelphia Flyers named Eric Lindros. As a fan, Hockey Consultant hated everything about the Philadelphia Flyers. And, of course, Hockey Consultant insisted her guy, Jagr, was far better than the Flyers’ guy, Lindros.
A decade and a half later, Hockey Consultant will shake her head in shame as she regurgitates exactly what she thought about Eric Lindros at about the time Scott Stevens was making it a point to bash Lindros’s head very hard. Lindros, you see, wasn’t as good as Jagr. Lindros wasn’t as good as people cracked him up to be. A specific flashback to the thoughts of a 15-year-ols fan yields something like the italicized paragraph below:
Eric Lindros is a whiny crybaby who needs to learn how to keep his head up. If Lindros had the sense and wits to keep his up and not do that stupid stuff, he’d never get concussions and he’d be perfectly fine. If Lindros were truly as good as people say he is, if he were really as good as he was heralded to be, none of this stuff would have happened to him. Clearly, Jaromir Jagr has superior hockey sense. Clearly, if Jagr can play and not get concussed, then Lindros isn’t as good as Jagr. While Bobby Clarke is an imbecile for insisting Lindros should play through serious injuries, fact of the matter is, if Lindros just had a bit more of that heralded hockey sense and used his brain a little better, maybe he would not have a brain injury in the first place. If Lindros is really that good, why can’t he just keep his head UP?
Hockey Consultant winces and is ashamed of her age-15 thinking. Because, as you’d probably guess, Hockey Consultant doesn’t think the same way she did at fifteen anymore. As an adult she’s read about the post-playing lives of players like Eric Lindros and Keith Primeau, and she can now see them first as humans, not as she used to see them (when they were Flyers and that’s all they were because, yes, hockey fans are that insane). Even this season, she’s read about the agony endured by another Flyer, Chris Pronger, and she admits all her italicized thoughts, circa age fifteen, were, are, and will always be completely wrong.
Yet, in February 2012, Hockey Consultant observes an NHL that still adapts, far too easily, to her fifteen-year-old mindset. In the 2011-12 season, the NHL still has a Rule 48 that puts the emphasis on a player in a vulnerable position to avoid the hit rather than making the elimination of head shots as black-and-white clear as are the league’s high-sticking penalties. Hence, head hits that concuss athletes and have the potential to end seasons and careers aren’t always penalized due to the gray area of league rules. And the men who run the NHL don’t seem to have an interest in changing those rules. “It’s a hockey play. He has to accept risk. He has to keep his head up.” The most recent such incident happened in a game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Dallas Stars, but the ongoing dialogue has happened throughout the year, and all often, we still hear, “It’s just part of hockey.”
There are legitimate business reasons to eliminate all headshots from NHL hockey (including the need to insure contracts; avoid legal trouble, both with being sued and have the government intervene and shape the game for you due to serious injuries; and the obvious one of needing to sell and market the players who can do what few others on the planet can do). Likewise, there are legitimate medical reasons to eliminate any gray area when it comes to “legal” hits to the head in NHL hockey (concussions are a brain injury, not like playing on a broken foot) . Yet none of these reasons seem to make a dent in in the ingrained mindset of those who are accustomed to viewing incidental head contact, and well, everything awful that’s associated with it, as unfortunate but a “part of hockey and we can’t do anything about it.”
Except they can do something to minimize it, by eliminating the gray area. And the only thing, it seems, which gets a mindset to change, is when it’s YOUR guy who’s the one who could be the next Eric Lindros.
Let Hockey Consultant admit what she’s felt as a fan. Twice this season, she’s watched her current favorite player drop to the ice after being struck in the head. (Yes, Eric Nystrom may not have targeted Kris Letang’s head, but Nystrom still hit Letang in the chin, which, last time Hockey Consultant checked, was part of the head.) She’s winced each time it happened and wondered if a 24-year-old who’s been projected to win a “Norris trophy or two” by the time his career is over is actually going to get that chance.
And she understood something, as a fan, which she didn’t understand at fifteen. Speaking from the mindset of a fan of the Pittsburgh Penguins: Crosby and Letang are her guys. They’re HERS.
Do they lack hockey sense? (Despite what some amusing folks posting on online forums complain about when they’re nitpicking about Letang, hardly.) Are they soft? (No. Ask the Ottawa Senators of 2010, who remember Kris Letang as a player who regularly took hits to make plays.) Are they players who lack toughness or heart or hockey sense, who somehow “deserve” the concussions they got? When Letang’s head is slightly down because in both cases, he was actually trying to make a hockey play, that’s supposed to mean it’s OK to hit him in the head? (Needless to say, Hockey Consultant no longer thinks what she used to think of Eric Lindros, either.)
Now, from the broader perspective. Take a look at the list of players who have been out with concussions this season. The Blackwks, Flyers, and Penguins—three contenders for the Stanley Cup, especially if the teams were 100% healthy—are all without their captains and faces of the franchise due to concussions. The Capitals are without their number one center. Three of these teams are still in playoff position. But their fans, and potential fans, don’t get to see these teams at their best.
And the crazy thing? A simple change to the rules could fix part of this. Not fix all of it. Not eliminate all concussions. But simply do what’s done for high-sticking, where accidental or not, the penalty is the same. Eliminate head-shots. One-time headhunter Matt Cooke has stopped hitting people in the head, and if Matt Cooke can stop hitting opponents in the head, other players can learn to do the same.
Because, when it comes to NHL hockey, they are all “our” guys. Claude Giroux and Chris Pronger from the Flyers; Jonathan Toews from the Blackhawks; Nicklas Backstrom of the Capitals—these are “my” guys as much as Sidney Crosby and Kris Letang of the Pittsburgh Penguins. They’re the men who should be the headline stories in the playoffs. The Pittsburgh Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers could easily meet in the first round of the 2012 playoffs. Both teams could easily be without their franchise players—and not due to “hockey plays” like shot blocks that break bones or inadvertent, accidental, awkward collisions that result in torn knee ligaments.
But, if you’re a fan, or you’re in the game, you know the agony you feel when it’s “your” guy who goes down? When it’s Letang who’s sprawled on the ice again, a player who’s beloved both by at-opposite-ends-of-the-spectrum Hockey-Hall-of-Famers Scott Bowman and Paul Coffey, and you’re angry and sad and worried all at once about the player and the game and the league?
And there’s a simple way to look at reducing the agony that simply says, “Be accountable and don’t hit someone in the head.”
You don’t want it happening to your guy. Then, remember something else, Eric Lindros is your guy. So is Keith Primeau. So are Sidney Crosby, Chris Pronger, Kris Letang, Claude Giroux, Nicklas Backstrom, and Jonathan Toews.
Let the playoffs be a fair fight between the franchise centers and franchise defensemen of the Flyers and the Penguins. And you do that, simply, by saying that a hit to the head—accidental or inadvertent or not—is not a hockey play, and that it has no place in the NHL game.
Because all those guys. They’re all your guys, and they deserve to be treated the way you want your guys to be treated. And if there is any possible way to prevent your guy from being sprawled on the ice in agony, or out for months, or out for the year, or done with his career far too soon, if that injury to your guy could have been prevented--be honest.
You want to do what it takes to protect your guy. If the injury could have been prevented by a simple change to the rules, you want the rule change. Because you want your guy on the ice, doing his thing and helping your team. So, the emotional argument to ban all headshots--accidental or otherwise--is simple.
You don't want it for your guy, and, though your fifteen-year-old self may not realize it, truthfully, they're all your guys.
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