The NHL really didn't help itself today with this joke by the Player Safety Department.
Let me take a step back, at the beginning of our football season, we as coaches were mandated to take a safe tackling course and teach it to our players. The idea was to protect the players and reduce concussions.
Everyone thought that we did it solely for safety, but the truth is that in terms of contact sports, we're losing the public relations battle, with law suits against the NFL and Hockey over concussions, the last thing the NHL needs to do is not suspend an idiot that's doing a ground and pound on a defenseless player while the Linesman uselessly tries to break it up.
In football everytime I watch a pro game or college game and I see a dangerous hit, I'm basically saying "Thanks for nothing you guys" because I know that every parent that's watching the game is having doubts about enrolling their kid in football.
Its going to be the same thing in all contact sports including hockey. Everytime sports net shows that parents aren't going to be all that pumped about their kid playing the game, On top of that when the punishment is basically nothing but an atta-boy by his team mates, well, I go back to my first point. . .
We're losing the public relations battle.
Let me be really clear, I'm fine with fighting in hockey, that's fighting. Two guys say lets go, they drop the gloves and they settle it, and when one opponent is defenseless you stop the beating. What Brouwer did a few games ago was wrong, what the Wings did in this game was really wrong.
The NHL had a chance to pump the brakes, and be able to say to everyone watching, we're on top of this, player safety is important, instead they fracked it up and made arses out of themselves, and now there's a ultra embarressing clip on Sports shows. Thanks a lot guys, in 10 years football and hockey will dwindle and its thanks to shyte shows like this and a incompetent players safety department.
The funny thing is this, because I'm old and I was raised to play hockey in a very old school way, my first thought was, in the first game of next year against the Wings you punish the Wings, you drop the gloves, and you get your pound of flesh. But now what will happen, is the NHL will mishandle this again, they'll show up and warn the Flames not to do anything or suspensions and punishment will be handed out, so in fact the very act that should have been punished will be doubly awarded.
This one is really as much on the Detroit coaches as the players, and honestly as soon as that idiot stepped on the ice, not only should there be a player ejection and suspension, but the head coach should be ejected and a 5 minute bench penalty issued, so the team is now 5-3 for 5 minutes.
MT got suspended because the logic was that he escalated this thing, but its pretty sad that a player gets dangerously beaten senseless on the ground in the opposing players bench because their resident idiot got tapped on the ankle, which is the NHL's logic, but in my world they call that insane clown logic, where the worse act and the retaliation goes completely un punished and in effect rewarded.
Way to go NHL, in the battle for credibility and public relations wins you're 0-2 today.
Grapes Supporter
