The slashing in this league is too damn high UPDATE: League cracking down

[TheFlamesVan]

Originally Posted by StrykerSteve

If your stick touches someone's gloves, it's a penalty. Make it black and white.

I like this a lot actually.

[rohara66]

Here’s what Johnny needs to do.

Next season, opening game (can’t do it now for risk of retaliation penalties hurting us) first time he takes a whack on the hands he needs to give it right back. Or anyone on the team can retaliate. Start clubbing people, ankles, wrist, hands, behind the knee doesn’t much matter. He can even start taking some retaliation penalties, who cares. Players and teams need to know the Flames players wont take #### like that.

Like Chucky throwing that elbow… you know that play is going to pay dividends his entire career now. Opposing players will be second guessing (even for a split second) if they think a flying elbow is coming at their chops next time they try and line him up. Fleury said just as much in a recent interview, he had to retaliate to survive in the league.

Whack away Johnny.

[442scotty]

Or raise your stick up waist high as they try and crash you.... Oops! Works for Marchand (except for the major he just got a few minutes ago omg!)

[Fan in Exile]

The game last with Anaheim last night is a good example of how things spiral out of control when the officials don't enforce the rules. Kessler gets away with slashing on every bloody shift. No call until someone finally slashes him back (Frolik). Kessler sees someone he thinks he can get the better of and goes after him and they each get two minutes. Calgary ends up with the extra call. The NHL is atrocious in this regard. Constantly missing the initial infraction and penalizing the retaliation. Call the infractions and there won't be retaliations. Bad officiating leads to self-policing and garbage like Marchand's spear and Crosby's recent incidents.

[madmike]

It's a bit of a joke given Gaudreau has already suffered a broken hand this year because of it. The league needs to start cracking down on stickwork and obstruction.

[CaptainCrunch]

Dress a guy like Hathaway and tell him to break Kesler's hand.

Seriously there's not much that you can do except get your coach and captain to be on the refs about this stuff.

And if it persists in game one, then have Treliving stand up at the press conference and run every single video clip of every slash and ask if this is the NHL or the WWE.

[Flash Walken]

The league does not care. they haven't cared for 25 years if they ever cared at all.

Players need to police themselves on the ice, simple as that. Better to ask forgiveness than permission in the eyes of the league.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

The league does not care. they haven't cared for 25 years if they ever cared at all.

Players need to police themselves on the ice, simple as that. Better to ask forgiveness than permission in the eyes of the league.

That'd be nice but the cost is too heavy for the whole police yourself action.

A few years ago fans wanted to get rid of players having the ability to police themselves. They wanted to remove the things like the Lemieux Draper stuff for example.

But what happened is we ended up with basically a cheap shot league where the pests became extremely sought after commodities, the Avery's and Cookes and Keslers etc became worth their weight in gold because Refs have been told to clamp down on retaliation and its ok to miss the initial act.

You can't have that nuclear option where you can tell a team that if they go after our star, we'll go after yours.

On the positive we got rid of the heavy weight staged fight, on the negative side, the league took out the ability to self police itself and it isn't going to return.

[calgaryblood]

So the nhl is cracking down on slashing this season. Couldn't be happier.

Auston Mathews was just on TSN and mentioned Gaudreau by name when talking about the slashing in the league.

[AC]

It's going to be a pain for the first while as they call every minor slash. But enough was enough last season. Gaudreau has been getting hacked multiple times every shift for years now and only draws a small fraction of penalties that should've been called.

[Robbob]

Is the crack down on all slashes or slashes to the hands? I thought it was to curb the "tap". Last night it seemed anything horizontal to the ice was called regardless if it hit hip or hands.

[bubbsy]

really hope the players figure this out before the start of the season... the penalties have been a pain to watch so far.

[PepsiFree]

If they don't figure it out before the start of the season I doubt it'll take them long after. When the games matter and you're taking 5+ lazy penalties a game, it'll smarten you up quickly.

[habernac]

Call them all. Get the damned hacks out of the game.

[GoJetsGo]

The League should review the Flames-Wild game from last year and highlight all the slashing penalties and send it out as an instructional video to Officials and Teams.

[automaton 3]

This is long overdue.

It is one thing to call them all in pre-season. The true test will be if they continue to call it the same way in the playoffs, or will throw out the rule book as per usual.

[Joborule]

Hopefully the league sticks with the growing pains in the early part of the season. This needs to be carried out fully.

[iggy_oi]

The league should have been all over this back when Mario Lemieux started dealing with wrist injuries from excessive slashes. How the league has let this issue get to this point is beyond me, getting to the clutch and grab era was at least somewhat explainable since holding didn't cause any injuries, but allowing slashing to get as out of hand as it has is ridiculous. They would never accept tripping to be allowed like this.

[GreenLantern2814]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

The league should have been all over this back when Mario Lemieux started dealing with wrist injuries from excessive slashes. How the league has let this issue get to this point is beyond me, getting to the clutch and grab era was at least somewhat explainable since holding didn't cause any injuries, but allowing slashing to get as out of hand as it has is ridiculous. They would never accept tripping to be allowed like this.

Why don't we allow a little holding back into the game? Not an excessive amount, but figure out a standard that allows guys who are engaged in close quarters to seal off their man somehow.

Nobody gets injured on a holding call. So if you establish position, you should be allowed a grab. You can't hold on, but give the defender something. Just don't use your stick.

[EVERLAST]

They should make ripping the stick out of your opponents hands legal.

If you make it back to the bench it's no penalty. Tkachuk style.