Of course, it’s Gillies fault… and the stanchion. It’s never the guy who directed the hit. Heck, why isn’t it Pac’s fault for being in that position in the first place? If his head isn’t between Chara’s hands and the stanchion, then this hit never happens.

In Newsday:

“I followed through with my hit. It wasn’t from behind, it was from the side,” Gillies said. “Mr. [Colin] Campbell paused the video and it shows me hitting him on the shoulder; there was a follow-through, so I have to learn to keep my hands down. But I think if my hands were down it would have been a good hit.”

Now Chara, he doesn’t have to learn, because any other spot on the ice, that’d be a good hit. Well except that it was illegal interference, of course. But you know, Chara is a good guy he has to learn to keep his hits legal. And not do them when it’s not legal and stuff. And, and…you know, Chara has no prior history…which I’m pretty sure was used as rationale the last time they looked at a Chara incident.

Gillies, “even though there was no injury on the play.” Chara, even though there was an injury on the play… It’s like several were saying in the other thread: If they don’t actually give a shit about player safety, why the hell should we?

If I worked with Gillies at the Post Office I don’t htink I’d be there the week he got off of suspension.

/snorts coffee into sinuses
//not intentionally

Not that some aren’t already worried on some level.

Colin campbell has asked any team who is playing the Bruins to hit somebody in the head with a puck so they can set a new league precedent with a 1000 game suspension… let me look to see has the Bruins on their schedule… oh my!

Sunday’s Headline…
JOHN TAVARES HIT WITH 1000 GAME SUSPENSION for wrist shot that hits Tim Thomas in the mask.
League feels this is adequate discipline and immediately pulls 1000 game suspensions off the table at the request of the NHLPA.
John tavares looks forward to coming back a 33 year old grizzled vet!

its about time someone tried to get the NHL to be consistent with this crap
i could live with gillies’ suspension if EVERYONE was dealt with as such, if EVERYONE who did something dirty had the book thrown at them, but clearly the NHL doesnt give a shit about protecting its players.
Such a load of bull

Hit the league in the pocketbook. All the sponsors should threaten to pull. And yeah, that shiny new TV deal you’re hoping for, Bettman? You think this is what the world would like to see?

but seriously i hope he does sue the NHL and i hope he makes a full healthy recovery, best of luck to him

Good to “see” ya!

And if they use it that way I would have no problems with it – but if they’re going to ignore “targeting the head” (such as Lucic’s crosscheck to Domenic Moore) and “principal point of contact” (such as Chara’s forearm riding Pacioretty’s face into the partition) then Rule 48 becomes Plaintiff’s Exhibit A in the lawsuit against the NHL for gross negligence and loss of wages.

If they aren’t going to follow the rules themselves, then I have no problems calling it “lip service” instead of a serious attempt to protect the players’ safety. It looks increasingly like they’re using the absence of it last year to avoid doing right by Marc Savard on the Matt Cooke hit (which should have been a match penalty – charging AT LEAST), and going back to pretending that nothing’s changed.

Oh, but that trapezoid? You’d damned well better respect the trapezoid!

At least they’re finally getting rid of seamless glass this year.

And nobody wants to see the goalies hurt when everyone crashes into them. I’ve been crashed into myself – tisn’t fun. But honestly I didn’t connect that directly with the breakaway posts. I figure guys just crash and think that the goalie will break their momentum.

but the public opinion thing had to have them factor that in (rightfully so).

1) High hit and charge.
2) Punching the guy while he’s down and hurt (even if Gillies didn’t know, he’s still culpable…unless his first name is Zdeno)
3) The taunting and image hit the NHL takes when a fiery beast is taunting a prone and concussed player from 10 feet away. Honestly, Gillies should have walked his ass to the locker room and not stood at the gate there. You’re thrown out, you need to get out.

Of course, good luck having Colie and his office outline whether any of the above were actual reasons, and why they added up to 9 games for a guy with, ahem, “no prior history.”

As in:

Personally, I see Pacioretty as a player who poked the bear for three straight games, then was foolish enough to put himself in a position where the big Bruin could exact payback. … The score is 4-0 Montreal, with seconds left in Period 2. He knows Chara wants to crank him. He can see the partition coming. Pacioretty had every reason to believe he was entering a very dangerous spot, yet he went in there like a defenceman turning his back to the ice, counting on the rulebook to protect him.

All this talk of the stanchion is purposefully ignoring the real issue. By the end of a game, for a 33-year-old, almost 10-year vet, he should know where the danger stops in Montreal are (a team in his division for the last however many years). It isn’t like the new Habs arena opened a week ago. That’s what makes this hit most despicable and deliberate. Even Montador acknowledged this idea.

It doesn’t matter what outcome you intended, Chara….

I think there was a respect at one time in this game, but recently the league has taught guys to act entitled and ignore the safety of their fellow players.

And I didn’t even recognize that piece of Bob’s comment. And exactly why “intent” is BS becaus if anyone really had “intent” to deliberately injure anothe player, I would imagine they would be shunned by the league altogether and probably by their peers. Maybe the NHL did themselves a disservice with the semantics and we are taking it too literally…unfortunately, they don’t clarify what they really mean.

Especially roughness as fair play, in the normal course of the game. Or as Dom always says, physical hits becuase you’re in a good position to make that play – NOT as a last resort because you’ve been beaten and have to do something.

(and btw, I love your screen name. It’s like a Jack Kirby character or something. I always picture you in dramatic poses as you type your comments, with people swooning in awe in the background, narrating what you do.)

it would be Assault Causing Bodily Harm (max punishment: 10 years) or Aggravated Assault, with a max penalty of 14 years in prison, keeping in mind the Bertuzzi precedent of no jail time.

This is one of the fine lines the NHL needs to keep in mind. If they start levelling accusations that “Chara intended to cause injury” as they did, in fact, in relation to Gillies, then they open the whole game up to Police and Criminal Court involvement, whcih no one wants. Unfortunately, when they do absolutely nothing, then political beasts like Prosecutors start getting involved, which is not good for anyone.

It really amazes me that this is getting blown way up in the public’s mind when people like James Harrison are defended as hard hitters in the NFL.

What Chara meant to do is not even germaine to what happened and where his hands were when it happened. Even Murphy said that it appeared that Chara was angling his opponent into the boards. The invisible boards above the bench? or the incoming exposed turnbuckle?

One will never have a record until they comit their first offense! Chara, therefore STILL has a clean record and will still be exempt for punishment when the next incident happens. F***ing amazing huh?!

I posted about this on my own blog, actually, not wanting to duplicate the efforts of others here. Lemieux checks Draper from behind and he smacked his face on the edge of the dashers, he was about two feet from the stanchion. And Lemieux had also crosschecked a different Wing from behind earlier in that game, sent him into the open doorway. He was completely out of control in that series.

So why did it take 14 years after this to specify the ban on hits from behind? Good question.

I’m saying something about perception of ability and it’s relation toward any (good or bad) agenda…just because I used a politician as an example doesn’t mean I’m sparring with anybody’s politics. Hard to argue that the man was considered a bungler by many.

From here on in, turn to me for all of your suspension prediction needs!

When a player is off balance or vulnerable and you lay a "legal" or slightly "illegal" hit on them you expose them to injury (eg Phenuef and Okposo). As a player hitting them you know the game and you know this. According to the rules however this would never be defined as "intent to injury" because you are playing within the confines of the rulebook.

Is that the reason he was off-balance was the contact that Chara initiated in the first place. Interference becomes a funny beast because it is an “evolution” penalty. Minor contact is often overlooked, prolonged contact becomes a penalty, so I can see that complicating matters. If you were to look at that whole play, at what point (take the metal post and injury out of the equation for a second) would you consider it a 2 minute interference penalty? So in this case either way (wheter Pacs was in control or not) I would say that Chara caused the out of control and still want a suspension of some kind (2-4)

This is like the NHL disciplinary system. You have to figure out the rules on your own

would lend a bit more to “intent” because they have a history. Remember, now this is becoming a debate about intent.

We try to distance ourselves. They’re like the weird, socially awkward younger sibling

It may stop the neck from breaking, but no amount of padding is going to stop a concussion

I’ve never heard of a player complain about it before…it doesn’t happen that often, and if Chara isn’t being an a-hole, nothing happens. My thing with the NHLPA thing is then why say anything at all? I mean this is something that now the fan base and sponsors can look at and incredulously ask “how disconnected is the players association from reality?” Just idiots everywhere.

There hasn’t really been any player that has complained about those dreaded attack stanchions, and as a matter of fact, several have said that most players know exactly where they are because they’ve been there for the entire 20 years that these players have been involved in the game. Anything can be made safer, but that is secondary to player on player problems in my opinion.

it sin’t the ride that kills you; it’s the sudden stop at the end, and padding isn’t going to help.

I forget which host was saying, “I saw this still photo of the moment Pacioretty’s head hit the padding, and I guess that padding isn’t very good because it looked like it all crumbled under the impact.”

I wanted to scream: PADDING ISN’T SUPPOSED TO BE RIGID! It’s impact absorption! It’s physics! An airbag isn’t an airbag just so it folds nicely above your glovebox!

“Our hockey operations people are extraordinarily comfortable with the decision that they made,” Bettman said. “It was a horrific injury, we’re sorry that it happened in our fast-paced physical game, but I don’t think whether or not supplemental discipline was imposed would change what happened and in fact the people in the game who I have heard from almost to a person … believe that it was handled appropriately by hockey operations.”

As long as they can sleep at night. I’m sure Pac won’t have it as easy.

The second bold is the kicker in this abortion of logic from the Commish. Supplemental discipline never changes what happens because you would need powers over time and space to do that. What happened happened, but what supplemental discipline is supposed to do is deter the offender from acting so recklessly in the future. Banning Gillies for 19 games hasn’t brought back Tangredi or Clutterbuck (iirc), but yet his punishment is sent as a message for his future actions.

As a society, we teach children to accept the consequences of their actions regardless of their intent AND regardless of whether the punishment will erase the act itself. Why does that common sense piece of parenting logic seem alien to the NHL and its superstars (or star teams)?

Can we start a petition to remove Bettman from his role? Clearly, he’s not a good representative for hockey in both America and Canada. Let’s send it to the Board of Governors….don’t they have the power to fire him?

The Komisarek hit.

Although it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy (Carcillo), still unnecessary and dangerous. Toronto fans are calling for a 3 year suspension.

but that is a function of having a damaged frontal lobe isn’t it? You almost wonder if the concussions contribute to the inhibition to hit like that and continued hitting like that makes you less likely to be inhibited…and the cycle goes???

Ballsy by Hank!

"I’ll tell you this: if you say that you don’t know where things are around the ice, I think you’re not telling the truth," Sedin said. "You play the game for 20 years, you know it’s there. It’s gotten to the point, you have to suspend guys if you hit the head. You have to do it even if guys say they didn’t mean to do it or it’s an accident. You have to start somewhere.

That’s the most that’s been said ever. It’s about time…and no offense on the Gillies thing. I’m sure ole Trev would be happy that a Sedin know his first name!