Several recent rule changes have resulted in higher-speed collisions, impacting the safety of players in the NHL and beyond
By Kevin Hartzell
Let’s Play Hockey Columnist
Not all that long ago, I recall being in a meeting arguing against making checking from behind a penalty. There was a day not that long ago when “checking from behind” was not a named penalty. It was a penalty by a couple of other names. Anyway, so there I was arguing against making it a named penalty. After watching the not-so-occasional debate on suspensions being handed out for dangerous hits, I think looking back I was right to argue as I did. Before you go thinking I must be crazy to argue against checking from behind, let me explain my thinking as well as my position on a couple of other penalties I am against as well.
It is has been my experience that much of what we do in life has some level of unintended consequences. That is just the case in my opinion with checking from behind as a penalty. Back then I argued and still will that we had the penalty calls in place needed to protect players. Those calls were “charging” and “boarding.”
The problem was that these calls of charging and boarding were too nondescript. They still are. The hockey community needed to better define and illustrate for players and coaches that these penalties were penalties of intent.
If the checker is coming from a distance with little to no intention of playing the puck on his mind and only a higher speed physical hit, it is charging. Players should always have playing with and defending the puck as their No. 1 objective. Playing the body is something you do when the puck carrier doesn’t move the puck as quickly as they should, but all the while playing the puck. When intent is on playing the puck, sticks are on the ice defending the puck and body checks are lower and more controlled. When the puck is an afterthought, we can all see the physical intent of the checker and it usually results in a body check that is higher and harder.
Boarding was harder to define and illustrate, but it was a check from behind, a dangerous hit or intent to use the boards to ram an opponent in a vulnerable position, not just from behind. Again, if the puck is the objective, a legal hit will usually be more controlled, more of the nature to stop your opponent from getting to his/her destination and less to simply ram the opponent into the boards. The intent should be to separate the puck from the player. The puck was still the objective.
I truly believe that we need to better instruct our players so that they understand the concepts of playing the puck, body checking and intent.
The rules were in place to cover what needed covering. We just didn’t define them well enough. Checking from behind as a named infraction was successful as it did bring some clarity to the issue. But it still doesn’t cover all there is to cover and it also brought with it some unintended but somewhat predictable consequences.
Players began to puck protect, turning their back to their checking opponents in areas that were a bit dangerous – nearer the boards. Without going to into nauseous detail, just look at a good percentage of hits that are causing both injury and suspension in the NHL. I watch these videos seemingly weekly and too often think that the checker delivering the hit, the guy getting suspended is at times being persecuted unfairly. Let me emphasize the ‘at times!’
Without getting into specific hits and occurrences, I will argue that a good percentage of these hits are caused at least in part by the player who is getting hit. Our rule change has nurtured an era where players are willing to turn their back to on-rushing checkers. I often say as an analogy, I know that cars are supposed to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks, but I still stop and check both ways before stepping out into one.
We have created a culture where players put themselves into harm’s way much too often and at times pay a pretty severe price for it. To see our best players participating in the NHL put themselves into harm’s way as often as they do, well, they are a product of our collective hockey culture.
Part of it is in the hockey culture – a mantra to sacrifice one’s own body to make a positive play. This goes for both the recipient and deliverer of the hit. Part of it is also our own training of players to protect the puck by showing our back to the checker. Bottom line, we created this culture. Too often, in my opinion, we are vilifying only the one delivering the check.
There is another rule that I think has contributed mightily to the problems of big hits and injuries and, in my opinion, is one of our worst rules in the game today.
Back in my day, a player was considered in possession of the puck until another player touched the puck. What it looked like was this: An attacking player came through the neutral zone with the puck. If he wanted to attack and beat the backward skating defensemen, he would need to use craftiness with the puck and also skating ability to get around and past the defensemen or to simply buy time to find teammates breaking towards the goal. This took a lot of skill and skating ability.
If the attacker dumped the puck deep into the attacking zone, the defensemen could impede the puck attacker’s progress until which time another player touched the puck. If the puck carrier gave up the puck, he was still considered “in possession” and you could physically play him like he had the puck until another player by either team touched it. This put a premium on maintaining puck possession.
The rule changed to “if you move/pass or dump the puck and the defender can avoid you, they must avoid you. With this change, there is less physical impeding of the attacker, more speed and more ability to fore-check and create offense. With less impeding allowed, there would be more forechecking pressure and more offense. More scoring is good for hockey, right?
Let’s look at what this rule has done for hockey. The premium used to be on possessing the puck and using skill to beat the D. Now I would say more times than not, the best play on a defenseman, especially a skilled D-man who has a good gap on the attacker, is to chip and try to recapture puck after getting by the defender. If the attacker possesses the puck, he can be physically confronted. If the attacker chips, or gives up the puck, he cannot be physically impeded. “Chip and recapture” is often a better play than possessing. So we took away at least some of the premium of maintaining possession.
The worst part, however, is that once the attacker chips the puck behind the defending D-man, it is often the other defenseman, the defender’s D-partner, who gets back to the puck first. The problem with this is that now both the D-partner and the former puck possessor-turned-forechecker have a lot of speed in their race to the puck. Bigger collisions happen on this play all the time.
Many people love this rule. I think it stinks! It encourages chips and dumps, and results in too many high speed collisions in the corners. And of course, a couple too many times in a game, the player that gets there first turns their back to puck protect for what is to be a higher speed collision … ouch … even worse!
These aren’t the only rules I don’t like, but they are the ones leading to some of our game’s biggest problems. They are the ones leading to injury and we need to look at how we define intent and how we teach the intent concept to our players and maybe even bring some legal obstruction back to the game.
I also don’t like the pucks over the glass in the defensive zone being a delay of game penalty. Delay of game should also be a penalty of intent. I know a lot of people don’t like giving that freedom of interpretation to the referees, but I do. If it’s a long shift and the referee thinks the intent of the D-zone player was to flip the puck out of the playing area to get a whistle, then let him call it as such.
As it is today, we give too many penalties for delay of game for plays that were clearly accidental and there was no advantage to the defensive team. The puck fluttered at impact and oops ... delay of game. I hate seeing games possibly decided on plays/penalties that are insignificant and that are most often accidental. The “can’t change” penalty was and is most often enough of a penalty for this.
A few rules I love: the quick set-up for faceoffs; no changes on icing; hybrid icing (the NHL finally adopted the hybrid icing … good rule for them); and sticks parallel to the ice that get up and into the hands of the puck carrier being a hooking infraction.
There have been some very good rules changes and enhancements for sure. I simply think we should rethink a couple rules and the speed we are encouraging in our game … not to mention our encouragement of our players to present themselves in vulnerable positions.
Lastly, I think we should be a bit cautious in what at times seems a move to be politically correct and conduct witch-hunts to claim villains to show we have accountability in our game. Accountability rests with all of us.
