More on the Hit Heard Round the World

The NHL today suspended Cam Janssen for 3 games for his hit on Tomas Kaberle. Who didn’t see this coming? This was too easy of a call for the NHL who have been hesitant to make any suspensions this year for hits to the head or any hits for that matter. Why was this too easy of a decision? Cam is a 4^th liner for the Devils who sees no more than 5 minutes of ice time per game. Nobody around the league was going to criticize this suspension, especially when the player is Cam Janssen. Also, the NHL could use the Cam Janssen suspension as a perfect example showing that they won’t be tolerating any of these hits anymore.

Here is where I disagree with the suspension of 3 games. This is a common hit in the NHL. This kind of play happens every night around the league. The only difference is that Kaberle had his head down and didn’t see it coming, which caused him to go awkwardly into the boards and unfortunately get injured. Once the stretcher came out, you knew Cam was in trouble. Here is where the problem is. The NHL is too fixated on suspending players for acts only if it results in an injury. It has been like this for years. If Kaberle has his head up and goes into the boards with a healthy crunch and skates back into the play, we never speak of this again. But because he is out for a few weeks, Cam must be suspended. Earlier in the year Alexander Ovechkin bumped Daniel Briere while Briere was going off to the bench causing him to go head first into the boards. It looked downright scary. Briere could have broken his neck and been another Steve Moore. Instead he was fine and the league decided not to give Ovechkin a suspension in one of the dirtiest acts in years. If the NHL wants to stop this from happening, they must start suspending players for late or dirty hits no matter what the result of the play is before players kill themselves. The NHL also has to suspend anyone, superstar or no superstar. This is the only way to cut any of these kinds of hits out of this game.