It is March 11, 2011 and the question is this: Are we tired of it yet? Of the hitting from behind? Tired of the head shots? Tired of hearing of players like Max Pacioretty having serious injuries? Tired of elbows and shoulders to the head and tired of Matt Cooke? It seems as if we are, as if we've had enough.
But there's a disconnect. The message isn't getting through. Someone is not listening. But who? Well Don Cherry don't get it. Colin Campbell doesn't either. Mike Murphy. And of the Chara hit on Pacioretty Gary Bettman proudly said that his "operations people were extraordinarily satisfied" with their decision not to suspend Chara. So he doesn't get it and many G.M.s and even some players don't get it, either.
NHL Fans Tired of Head Shots
Here's what they need to get: We don't want to see players needlessly injured, players hurt so badly that it jeopardizes their careers and their quality of life. We want hard hits, yes, we like that, but not cheap and dirty ones from behind and not elbows delivered at top speed to the head. Not shoulders raised up to get a shot in at the head. We don't want players leaving their feet like Ryan Getzlaff left his to smush Dan Hamhuis, who had his back turned, up against the boards in Vancouver.
We don't want purposeful hits to the head or accidental hits to the head, for they, too, can be prevented by making players aware and making them responsible. Don't push, as Chara did, a player's head toward the glass because even if you didn't mean that his head get drilled that hard you still could have avoided it. Don't jam your shoulder into a vulnerable head like Steve Moore did to Markus Naslund or Dave Steckel did to Sidney Crosby.
Don't punch people in the head and jump on them like Todd Bertuzzi did to Steve Moore. Don't slam your stick into a player's head like Gary Suter did to Paul Kariya back in 1998. Pointless and it robbed Kariya of the Nagano Olympics and eight months of his life and he was never the same player after that. Now the image of the Patrice Bergeron concussion comes to mind. An icing, Bergeron with his back to the play and Randy Jones crunched him. As brutal as it was needless.
Suspension Need to Fit NHL Crimes
Imagine Suter getting a 20-game suspension instead of the four he got. It would have sent a message, no? Kariya out 8 months and Suter got four games. That's what Matt Cooke got for a hit on Fedor Tyutin from behind. You think Cooke would have even hit Tyutin if he'd gotten 20 games for that vicious elbow to the head of Marc Savard? The one that may have ended Savard's career?
This is the bottom line: we don't want to see players affected for the rest of their lives due to concussions, like Keith Primeau is. So make the players responsible for what their elbows, shoulder, their bodies do to the heads of their opponents. There has to be a way. Because it's been going on forever, all these shots to the head, and we don't want to see it anymore.
Here's a thought: the problem must be that too many in the NHL are not yet tired of it. They pay lip service to it but they aren't really sending a message to the players who make these hits. Time after time, season after season. These hits just keep coming and someday someone just might get....
We're tired of it now.
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