[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Strange Brew

So you complain about bad analogies and then trot out a stub your toe analogy? Not easy to contradict yourself so immediately. Are people coached from a young age how to walk through a room with out stubbing their toe? Is it an elite skill that needs to be learned over years and constantly reinforced?

I also reject the notion that it is about apportioning blame to all parties so that it adds up to 100%. I get there is a desire to find a throat to choke here and I have never suggested that the player being hit is to "blame". The hitter is 100% responsible for their actions in making the hit.

I really don't see it that different from seatbelt or helmet laws. Again your analogy about intentional and unintentional criminal acts misses the mark IMO. YOU wear a seatbelt to protect YOURSELF from both types of acts. It in no way absolves the other party. If you absentmindedly forget your seatbelt, does that change the outcome for you?

I'm not trying to dispense "good advice" to NHLers. But I have no desire to watch a league where players are able to skate freely with the puck, unencumbered by any concerns of body contact. So yeah, keep your head up. In my experience, coaches of elite hockey players still reinforce that message. and don't consider it "at best, a useless thing to say".

If your desire is to reduce injuries to players, I have a hard time understanding your angle here. Throw the book at the players making these hits, I don't disagree one bit.

lol I prefaced it with saying I was going to use bad analogies, and picking apart the toe stubbing analogy is bordering on an absurd missing of the point. If you can’t grasp the message of “if you made a mistake you knew you shouldn’t have made and paid for it, and someone said ‘you shouldn’t have made that mistake,’ how relevant would you have found that information?” The answer is obviously: not really. Hronek got rocked by Reaves, that’s a better “keep your head up” message than anything the internet has to offer.

Put it aside for a moment. Assume everybody agrees with the basic idea that players should keep their head up. Assume everybody knows the things like “getting hit hurts” that you should have already assumed they know anyways to make this a meaningful conversation. The discussion is whether it’s the hitter’s responsibility to let up and you seem to agree it is. So what in the world are you arguing for?

It’s not about having a throat to choke or turning hockey into some magical figure skating event where everyone can freely skate with their head down doing twirly whirls and puck tricks unimpeded so you can toss that straw man out the window. Keeping your head up is always going to be part of hockey, EVEN IF it’s against the rules for guys to run other guys with their head down. They have to keep their head up to… you know… pass, shoot, make plays in general, avoid incidental contact. You don’t have to worry, the good advice that everybody already knows will always be relevant. But people will still accidentally get caught with their head down sometimes. This happens, like any accident. So maybe it’s ok if we consider making it slightly less likely to that this accident results in people suffering some pretty traumatic contact on purpose, yeah? If the idea is to protect players, “keep your head up” is cool but maybe discouraging the events that can lead to brain damage, drug addiction, and suicide would be an idea worth considering?

You’re acting like making something a penalty to discourage it will take it out of the game. Why do so many penalties occurs in a game, then? Why does fighting still exist? Fighting, holding, slashing, they’re against the rules, aren’t they? It’s not an extreme thing to say a hit like that should be penalized and it should be the hitter’s responsibility to avoid it (hence the penalty if they don’t). You even seem to agree, so again, what are you arguing about?