The NHL buries its (concussed) head in the sand

For a number of years now, the NHL has been dealing with an epidemic, or so it seems, called head shots. Essentially, the issue is that players are getting concussed on any and all hits where the player taking the hit gets impacted in the noggin. So, in typical NHL fashion, they look for news shades of lipstick to put on the pig rather than coming up with a logical solution.

The issue came up recently with the shoulder-to-the-head hit New York Islanders dangling "goon" Doug Weight laid on Carolina Hurricanes rookie Brandon Sutter. Sutter was chasing a puck unfortunately as Sutter lunged à la Markus Naslund after it, Weight lowered the boom on him. As a mediocre hockey player, one from the Eric Lindros "I have the puck on my stick therefore I should stare at it as I stickhandle" school of thought, I took my fair share of these shoulder-to-the-noodle hits. Now, I am not saying this was all Sutter's fault, far from it. He simply got caught in a bad position and Weight clobbered him.

The league should not be looking at the validity of the hit. It was not a charge, it was not an elbow and it definitely wasn't boarding. It was a clean hit with serious consequences. Hockey is a violent sport and hitting is a big part of it, but to say the league needs to create a penalty for head shots is like closing the blinds on a broken window. It's masking the problem. Giving out a two minute penalty for something that happens as fast as a hit is not going to make these types of injuries go away. Look at how the league enforces hooking penalties (or stick-parallel-to-ice penalty, as it should be called). Players know it's a penalty, but the game happens so fast and it will take years before the players fully adopt the change. A head shots penalty might help years from now, but that doesn't protect the players in the game today.

Hits where a player receives a blow to the head do happen in the NHL and always have. That is simply a by-product of players being different sizes. If a head shot rule were implemented, players like Zdeno Chara and Chris Pronger would have to drop their shoulders in cartoonish fashion to hit the player in the chest, which brings in another danger: helmet to helmet contact. Shoulder checks that come in contact with the head can cause injury; there is no question about that. But why is this an issue these days when it wasn't in the days of the Wayne Gretzky broomball helmet or the no helmet era? Players today wear more equipment covering more of their bodies than ever before. In theory, that should give the players more protection, right? Well, in theory having teams in Florida and Arizona makes sense too.

The fact is, big hits have always occurred in hockey, so what is so different about this hit on Brandon Sutter:


And this hit on Wayne Gretzky? (Quick note, that was the last shift Bill McCreary, cousin of the referee by the same name, played in the NHL)


A simple look at today's equipment and we see that, unlike the days of Gretzky, Orr, Howe or Richard, it serves as both protection and weapon. Gordie Howe made throwing elbows famous. He would plant a well-placed elbow to the head of another player's bare skull. So where was the rash of major head injuries in his era? Obviously, concussions are better diagnosed these days, and more precautions are taken when a guy gets his bell rung but the fact is hockey did not just recently become a contact sport.

Take a quick look at equipment of the 1970's (when the Broad Street Bullies were anything but gentle) and what players wear today:








When you combine bigger, stronger, faster athletes with bigger, lighter and harder equipment, something has to give. Most of the old style pads were made out of foam and leather rather than hard plastic and were designed to protect the players. Today's hard plastic might have some protection advantages, but it also the potential to cause serious injury. Just like a game puck hurts a hell of a lot more than a sponge puck, the current equipment causes a lot more pain than its predecessors.

Would Brandon Sutter have been injured had he and Doug Weight been wearing the softer, older style equipment? He most likely would, but probably not as severely. When Billy McCreary laid out Wayne Gretzky with a punishing open ice hit, Gretzky crumpled in similar fashion to Sutter, but he did not miss significant time, while Sutter's season could be over.

Obviously, the hits aren't identical, but I have a tough time believing that every hit in the NHL that causes a major head injury is due to the "bigger, stronger, faster" description of today's player. The league has to address the real problem here.

The NHL is forever tweaking goaltender equipment in an effort to increase scoring. It's time to use that same logic to decrease the injuries players are suffering year after year. Make hockey equipment that's sole design is to protect every player: the ones wearing it and those getting hit by it. Nobody wants to see players leave games on stretchers after body checks. Just as allowing goaltending equipment to balloon in size was bad for the game; the big body armour has much more serious effects and is terrible for the game.


Sources:

http://icehockeyequipment.ca/VINTAGE+ICE+HOCKEY+SHOULDER+PADS+DR.html
http://www.dkimages.com/discover/previews/746/40008387.JPG
http://www.247hockey.com/prod_images_large/SP441.jpg
http://www.reebokhockey.com/media/files/products/icon_HighEnd_Player_Elbow_9k__jpg_315x264_crop_upscale_q85.jpg
http://www.youtube.com