NHL Cracks Down On Illegal Checks

If you are a regular visitor to NHL.com you may have noticed three-time Stanley Cup winner Brendan Shanahan appearing regularly amongst the headlines.

This is because the NHL’s new Senior Vice President of Player Safety has released a number of short videos explaining various suspensions that have been dealt out to players convicted of breaking new or old rules in regards to body checking.

“Rule 48” has been introduced and deals specifically with illegal hits to the head as well as the boarding rule being modified, and is clearly an attempt to curb the increase in injuries and mainly concussions. The most high profile of these is of course Sidney Crosby’s battle back to fitness, but players such as Marc Savard and Peter Mueller are trying to come back from absences of over a season long as a result of post-concussion symptoms.

The NHL set up this new department of player safety this off-season to greater protect the players through rule changes, handing out supplemental suspensions and examining equipment as well. It can only be a good thing that a recently retired and highly respected player such as Shanahan is involved in the decision making surrounding player suspensions.

James Wisniewski of the Colombus Blue Jackets received a ban for the rest of pre-season and 8 regular season games for his cheap shot on Cal Clutterbuck last week, the longest suspension given out so far. Wisniewski connected with the winger’s face using his forearm knocking him to the ice, fortunately no injury was suffered on the play. The severity of the punishment took into account the facts that the horn had already sounded to end the period, Clutterbuck being nowhere near the puck and that Wisniewski has a history of offending.

Examples of boarding have also been reviewed and retrospective action applied. Boarding involves checking a defenceless opponent hard into the boards when you have the opportunity to avoid it, serious injuries usually occur when the check occurs from behind and the player is thrown face first into the boards or glass. This is what happened to Darryl Boyce of the Maple Leafs as a result of Jody Shelley’s hit and Shelley now misses the rest of pre-season and 5 regular season games. There have been other examples of boarding that have received similar but less severe bans due to Shelley’s past discretions.

It remains to be seen whether this tougher stance will reduce the number of illegal hits and the number of injuries, but these changes are necessary to protect all the players not just the skilled ones. The absence of Crosby from the second half of the 10-11 season was of real detriment to the league, and concussions can be agonising to come back from for players that suffer bad side effects.

With pre-season still ongoing, there still may be more incidents to come but it will be interesting to see how this carries over to the start of the regular season and whether we will see this happening more regularly when matches are being played at full intensity. If Shanahan is serious about removing illegal checks from the game then surely we will see it occurring without them getting too trigger happy with banning players. The right balance needs to found, being too overzealous may upset the game’s purists and take away from the spectacle of NHL hockey being one of the most physical sporting showcases in the world.