National Hockey League News 2010: New Penalty for Head Shots in NHL
We still vividly remember the Hit David Booth took in October when Mike Richards, while cutting across, landed a devastating blow on Booth’s head, knocking him out cold. Booth didn’t play for another 45 games. Richards was not suspended.
If you don’t remember that match, the image of an unconscious Boston Bruin’s Marc Savard on the ice at Mellon Arena should still be fresh in everyone’s memory. In March, Savard suffered a grade II concussion when Matt Cooke took his shoulder to Savard’s head. Savard was taken out of the game on a stretcher and did not return for the last 18 games of the regular season. It need not be said what a loss a sidelined Savard was to the Bruins.
Cooke too was not penalized and a few days later, the National Hockey League (NHL) ruled that Cooke would not be suspended for the hit. The hit, while dangerous, was not illegal.
Those incidents snowballed. An ever growing number of players, writers and broadcasters called for a ban on headshots. The NHL was listening intently. Changes to existing rules were in order and after intense deliberations; it took the better part of the year. And only on Thursday, the National Hockey League approved a new penalty that would take effect from next season. In a unanimous decision, blindside hits to the head would be dealt with major penalties and ejections.
As of March, a player who attempted such hits was subject to suspensions but the NHL wanted more. They wanted in game penalties and that’s what we have now. The newly approved rule calls for five minute in-game penalty at the discretion of the referee and game misconduct calls. Two game misconducts automatically suspend a player from the next game under the new rule. “For each subsequent game misconduct penalty, the automatic suspension will be increased by one game”, as per the new rules.
Boston Bruins president welcomed the decision. He said that not everyone would approve of the new rule in its current state but though it was necessary, at least an effort was being made to rid the game of such hits. “It is good to get a rule like this in place and try to get it out of the game and get to a situation where you are going to have fewer concussions because of it”, Bruins said.
Carolina Hurricanes General Manager said that he was satisfied with the efforts to get a rule in place and said that they would closely observe its effects on the game and attempt to improve it.
Referring to Booth and Savard’s accidents Brian Burke of the Toronto Maple Leafs said that had the rule been in place a year ago, the two players could have been spared of their injuries. Expressing a similar concern, Blackhawks forward Versteeg said that the rule was required to protect vulnerable players. “A hit to the head can change somebody's career”, he said.
If only it had not taken two serious accidents to spur officials into action and doing something to protect players. Nevertheless, in the end, they did what was necessary and didn’t take an unnecessarily period to do so.
The decision was announced after a five hours meeting of the board of governors. The league's competition committee approved the change before it was sent to the governors. The rule, called “Illegal check to the Head,” was proposed initially in spring when the board first met and approved now with an increased sense of urgency after the string of Blindside hits to the head put the governors under a lot of pressure to act. A 59.4 million dollars Salary Cap for NHL was also announced during the meeting.
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