[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by Calgary4LIfe

I see this sentiment often, I have always disagreed with it. If you back at the those very legal (for the time) Stevens hits, they were made to hurt people, right? They might have been 100% clean for that time, but they were meant to hurt players and take them out of the game.

My argument is that the same happens today, though the clear head-shots and so on are (mostly) taken out. Why are there huge hits? Just to separate the player from the puck? Doesn't have to be that big of a hit to achieve that desired outcome. So of course they are meant to 'hurt'.

To me, it doesn't matter if a hit is clean or dirty - if my teammate just got hit HARD and was either injured or could have been injured, I would feel the need to make that person answer for it and discourage further such hits.

To me, it has always made total sense to go after a guy who has just laid out my teammate hard, even if the hit was clean. The line gets fuzzier when it was obviously accidental, like the Keith hit on Dube a couple of seasons ago.

To me, it doesn't matter if the hit was clean or not. What matters is that you hurt my teammate, and now my job is to hurt you. (I am obviously speaking from the standpoint of a teammate here).

Yeah I can't understand this line of thinking. Sometimes clean hit result in injuries. I have hit a number of guys and sent them to the hospital a number of times in rugby games and never once had to fight or to be frank faced any retaliation outside of the confines of the Laws (rules). As long as the hit is clean then it is game on. There is no need to exact revenge or create some kind of frontier justice.

If you don't want your teammates to be hit in a physical sport perhaps physical sport isn't for you.