Around the NHL 2020-2021 | Offseason Edition

[Bench]

Yeah. I think Buchnevich and Panarin got brain damage from that "Horrific act of violence."

Again, why do you keep quoting that? I didn't say that.

And you need to stop hyper focusing on outcomes for this particular incident. Panarin may be just fine, but he was body slammed to the ice without his helmet on. It could have been really bad. It wasn't, and that's great, but you're just playing with fire.

Some of us don't think the entertainment value of the after whistle scraps is worth the potential cost. That's it. Get that through your ball hockey damaged skull.

 

[Winger98]

Violence has been part of hockey since I was a kid (and it was before that too, judging by what I've read).
By historical standards, that incident with Wilson was tame.
The reactions of millennials shows just how much hockey's changed and hockey fans have changed.
The reaction of the Rangers organization shows how much this game has changed.

Compare this incident and the reaction to:
1) Draper getting smashed from behind
2) Bertuzzi dropping Steve Moore.

Compare this, in terms of actual danger/safety, to Darren McCarty throwing punches at Claude Lemiuex as he turtled on the ice - one of the iconic moments in the history of the Red Wings organization.
Was McCarty suspended? Was he even thrown out of the game? No. In fact, he got in another fight. And then he scored the game-winning goal in overtime.

It's just hard to take the caterwauling over Wilison even a little bit seriously.

I think what Wilson did with Buchnevich was cheap. I really don't think what he did to Panarin was awful, considering Panarin f***ing asked for it. Wilson could have done a lot more and was about to before he caught himself.

The thing that really turned me off about Wilson was the penalty box pose.

so, you're upset things have changed and the standards you want to measure the incident by are no longer fully embraced.

 

[ricky0034]

I think Mick knows who these guys are and I would hazard a guess he has at least a rudimentary understanding of hockey.

I bet the dudes never even stepped onto a Hockey floor

 

[Slim]

Yeah. I think Buchnevich and Panarin got brain damage from that "Horrific act of violence."

Honestly, what do you not understand? The science has been extremely clear for much more than a decade now, just because NHL and NFL has been extremely slow to react does not change what we know about head injuries now. When you spew your one liners in reply you just come across as a quite disinformed teenager, although I am aware you are older.

You quote historical standards in a few posts above. You are aware that knowledge changes over history and what is considered good or bad as well? 47 years ago a hockey fan in Nebraska could cheer to all the cheap elbows and headshots during a game, get quite drunk and then drive home to rape his wife, without any legal consequenses. Things change and although we often feel it was better before, most changes are actually for the better historically. Some of my fondest old hockey memories involve a lot of pain being doled out, they are still good memories, but I do not want to see them today because I know what the aftermath was for a lot of those guys involved. And no, nobody on this board want the physical element to disappear from hockey, but not to change rules and regulations when we have the knowledge what certain types of violence does to players would actually doom the sport, especially with the NHL operating in the US which is a fantasyland for litigation.

I know that you will just scoff at this post and similar posts and maybe return another salvo of platitudes that reinforces your view, but all you are basically saying is I am stupid and I do not care or listen to information that does not equate with what I want the reality to be in my head.

 

[MBH]

so, you're upset things have changed and the standards you want to measure the incident by are no longer fully embraced.

By modern standards, that wasn't "horrific violence.
The play the other night, where Gostisbehere cross-checked the unsuspecting guy into the boards. That's f***ing dangerous. If that play goes badly, and it easily could have, a guy could miss a season.
Gost got suspended, as he should have.

But on this play, we have Tom Wilson - NHL bad bad boy - deliver a couple cheapshots - harmless cheapshots.
And then take down the guy climbing on his back.
Because it's Tom Wilson and the guy who was taken down was Panarin - people overreact.

The Buchnevich crosscheck to Mantha's chops was more dangerous.

The Department of Public SAFETY is out there protecting player safety, not giving out bad sportsmanship suspensions.

Nothing Wilson did was even that dangerous.

 

[The Zetterberg Era]

CTE being a thing now is always interesting to me as a defense. I understand the new terminology to some but head injuries were always a concern. I literally had to beg my parents to allow me to play hockey and it lasted until a kid on my team was paralyzed from the waste down in terms of my youth.

But I was forbidden from football and like I said ran a multiple year campaign to be allowed to play growing up against my mom.

The we know how dangerous crowd reminds me of my grandma when I was little saying if only we knew about smoking... You did, we always have. Go ahead and let this board in on another one, your cell phone is dangerous too...

Panarin shouldn't jump on Tom Wilson's back. Now if you want to put in a clause that says guys don't hit guys with helmets off fine... Frankly it is beyond time to adopt the IIHF rules if you're in the less violence crowd. I am not for the removal of fighting but I would put in their headshot rules and 3 point standings immediately. None of that changes what happened here. Also NHL linesman need to be more aware of who is on the ice. I think the old school guys were, that they don't see as much of this seemed to render them unprepared. You know the kind of damage Wilson can do in that situation he should be the first guy a linesman is going for.

 

[ricky0034]

Again, why do you keep quoting that? I didn't say that.

And you need to stop hyper focusing on outcomes for this particular incident. Panarin may be just fine, but he was body slammed to the ice without his helmet on. It could have been really bad. It wasn't, and that's great, but you're just playing with fire.

Some of us don't think the entertainment value of the after whistle scraps is worth the potential cost. That's it. Get that through your ball hockey damaged skull.

and even just purely from a business perspective no amount of attention from a game like this is worth the court hassles and bad publicity a major injury from it would cause

every time there's an incident like this it's literally rolling the dice, hence sports leagues wanting to reduce stuff like that nowadays

 

[Bench]

CTE being a thing now is always interesting to me as a defense. I understand the new terminology to some but head injuries were always a concern. I literally had to beg my parents to allow me to play hockey and it lasted until a kid on my team was paralyzed from the waste down in terms of my youth.

You are severely underestimating how much more we know in the last 20 years.

Yes, it's always been common sense that getting your bell rung is bad. But the long-term consequences are much more fully understood now. We didn't have the first confirmed case of CTE in a football player until 2005.

It shouldn't be surprising that as evidence and education expands, so to would those who treat it as a serious issue.

 

[MBH]

Honestly, what do you not understand? The science has been extremely clear for much more than a decade now, just because NHL and NFL has been extremely slow to react does not change what we know about head injuries now. When you spew your one liners in reply you just come across as a quite disinformed teenager, although I am aware you are older.

You quote historical standards in a few posts above. You are aware that knowledge changes over history and what is considered good or bad as well? 47 years ago a hockey fan in Nebraska could cheer to all the cheap elbows and headshots during a game, get quite drunk and then drive home to rape his wife, without any legal consequenses. Things change and although we often feel it was better before, most changes are actually for the better historically. Some of my fondest old hockey memories involve a lot of pain being doled out, they are still good memories, but I do not want to see them today because I know what the aftermath was for a lot of those guys involved. And no, nobody on this board want the physical element to disappear from hockey, but not to change rules and regulations when we have the knowledge what certain types of violence does to players would actually doom the sport, especially with the NHL operating in the US which is a fantasyland for litigation.

I know that you will just scoff at this post and similar posts and maybe return another salvo of platitudes that reinforces your view, but all you are basically saying is I am stupid and I do not care or listen to information that does not equate with what I want the reality to be in my head.

I know this may come as a shock to you, but disagreeing with you doesn't make someone stupid.
The reality is nobody took a serious blow to the head during that incident with Wilson.

You can embellish it all you want.
But if you're worried about that level of contact, you should not play contact sports.
Period.

 

[Slim]

I am not taking about the Wilson thing. I think it has been mightily overblown. There are other things that happen on a more or less day to day basis that are worse. I do think it should have been at least a one game suspension. What I was replying to was your reasoning and general stance on violence in hockey.

 

[Bench]

and even just purely from a business perspective no amount of attention from a game like this is worth the court hassles and bad publicity a major injury from it would cause

every time there's an incident like this it's literally rolling the dice, hence sports leagues wanting to reduce stuff like that nowadays

Very true.

It often takes litigation and or fear thereof to create meaningful change for billion dollar corporations, particularly when it comes to worker protections.

 

[Bench]

I am not taking about the Wilson thing.

I'm noticing a trend here.

 

[Bench]

so, you're upset things have changed and the standards you want to measure the incident by are no longer fully embraced.

When I was a dumb kid I thought the Stevens hit on Lindros was epic. Because I grew up on Don Cherry VHS tapes and I didn't know any better. It was a rockem sockem good time.

Now I watch that video and it's like, "Oh, he's going into fencing pose because his brainstem was just damaged to a high enough degree he's lost control of his motor functions."

Wow, epic hit! So much fun. If you don't want brain damage keep your head up you idiot, lol.

 

[Winger98]

By modern standards, that wasn't "horrific violence.
The play the other night, where Gostisbehere cross-checked the unsuspecting guy into the boards. That's f***ing dangerous. If that play goes badly, and it easily could have, a guy could miss a season.
Gost got suspended, as he should have.

But on this play, we have Tom Wilson - NHL bad bad boy - deliver a couple cheapshots - harmless cheapshots.
And then take down the guy climbing on his back.
Because it's Tom Wilson and the guy who was taken down was Panarin - people overreact.

The Buchnevich crosscheck to Mantha's chops was more dangerous.

The Department of Public SAFETY is out there protecting player safety, not giving out bad sportsmanship suspensions.

Nothing Wilson did was even that dangerous.

To you what he did wasn't that dangerous. Clearly, to a whole bunch of hockey fans, commentators, etc. what he did was dangerous and was out of bounds. Does that make what Ghost or Buchnevich did any more or less dangerous? No, I don't think these things should be graded on a curve, and it doesn't make what Wilson did any less dangerous. And if you can't see the potential danger in those exchanges, or how out of the norm Wilson's reaction was, I'm not sure we have any reason to talk about this.

You've wanted to lean into some sort of historical context with this but what was seen as okay twenty-five years ago doesn't matter now. You keep revisiting this idea of "horrific violence," which is a level of violence I'm not sure you'd want associated with hockey under any circumstances. You bring up this idea that younger people are the ones driving the issue with this...yeah, they probably are. Because they are the ones who are going to be buying tickets, jerseys, etc. going forward. They are going to be the ones deciding if their kids can play. Yeah, things change. The level of acceptable danger shifts.

You can push this narrative that people are only going for the clicks or whatever but even if they are just going for the clicks...well, they're getting clicks because the message is resonating.

 

[Winger98]

When I was a dumb kid I thought the Stevens hit on Lindros was epic. Because I grew up on Don Cherry VHS tapes and I didn't know any better. It was a rockem sockem good time.

Now I watch that video and it's like, "Oh, he's going into fencing pose because his brainstem was just damaged to a high enough degree he's lost control of his motor functions."

Wow, epic hit! So much fun. If you don't want brain damage keep your head up you idiot, lol.

Yeah, some of the stuff going back and re-watching it now...it gets cringe worthy. there was/is a lot I like about 90s hockey but there was also a lot of stuff that I'm fine not seeing in the game any more. For whatever reasons those big blow'em up hits became a huge deal, and I think the league still suffers from it. Guys always took the body, but there became an aspect of it at that time where it was almost a competition to see who could most violently debilitate someone. It was weird.

 

[Bench]

They are going to be the ones deciding if their kids can play. Yeah, things change.

There's always pushback to change. It's the future. And there's nothing scarier than that.

 

[Hen Kolland]

I know this may come as a shock to you, but disagreeing with you doesn't make someone stupid.
The reality is nobody took a serious blow to the head during that incident with Wilson.

You can embellish it all you want.
But if you're worried about that level of contact, you should not play contact sports.
Period.

The logic here is silly because you are taking a sport that's main goal has quite literally has nothing to do with physical contact. You could adapt the rules to remove fighting, severely punish head contact, and allow for the standard push and shove and everything about the actual point of the sport would be the exact same. I'm not saying that's what I want, but the fact that you think that agreeing to the potential (please note that this says potential) for significant (and largely preventable) brain and other physical trauma is the core requirement to participate is just unfortunate. Yes there are risks to participating in contact sports, but that doesn't mean we can't mitigate those risks.

I think fighting and hitting and all this stuff has a place in the sport, and I would be upset to see it go. I just want to see it governed better by the league. If you and Bench decide to drop the gloves off the opening faceoff, I will gladly watch because you both know what you are getting into. What I want to see the league do is ensure that players don't have the freedom to clip someone with an elbow, drive someone's head through the boards, bounce a head off the ice, jump an unwilling participant from behind. And if those things do happen, I want to see the league step up to the plate and punish it accordingly. That is the point of having a department dedicated to player safety. You keep players safe by putting a stop to problems before they become problems, not wait until the worst case scenario happens. Most players don't want to deal with the ramifications of repeated brain injuries, and that should be the primary focus of DoPS.

 

[Winger98]

There's always pushback to change. It's the future. And there's nothing scarier than that.

I don't know, some of the stories I've heard about my great grandmother have made me pretty damn fearful of the past.

 

[Bench]

I don't know, some of the stories I've heard about my great grandmother have made me pretty damn fearful of the past.

Don't ruin my poetic moment.

 

[Bench]

Yeah, some of the stuff going back and re-watching it now...it gets cringe worthy. there was/is a lot I like about 90s hockey but there was also a lot of stuff that I'm fine not seeing in the game any more. For whatever reasons those big blow'em up hits became a huge deal, and I think the league still suffers from it. Guys always took the body, but there became an aspect of it at that time where it was almost a competition to see who could most violently debilitate someone. It was weird.

Your post here made me think of Paul Kariya. A guy who kind of embodied the dangers of that era. Undersized, tough as nails guy that just kept going back out there.

It took him 6 concussions (recorded ones anyway) until he finally retired.

This is a tough read if you loved Kariya (I was very young but saw him play for Maine way back when) and just love hockey like most of us do.

Paul Kariya was forced to retire in 2011 due to concussions. Six years later he broke his silence.

Michael Farber: “You haven’t been curious, gee what would it be like to be skating in my gear?”
Paul Kariya: “If I could, I would still be playing professionally. No questions asked.
“I woke up in a hospital bed. I didn’t know who I was or where I was. When I saw what happened, I was… furious wouldn’t describe the words. And not for myself, but for the fact that these hits were still happening in the game.”

Michael Farber: “How much of your brain function did you lose after the concussions?
Paul Kariya: “At the end of my career when I was tested by Dr. Lovell who created the IMPACT testing, I dropped over 60%. When I was tested by another doctor, just a general test for my general age group, I was testing in the 25th percentile. I was a decent student. I got into Harvard. I’m not a 25% student. There was significant damage.”
Michael Farber: “When did things start to clear and you thought I’m going to be okay?”
Paul Kariya: “Two years later.”

[...]


Michael Farber: “Why doesn’t the league hire someone like you for Player Safety over the people who work there now?”
Paul Kariya: “That’s a question for the league.”

Michael Farber: “How should the league best address concussions?”
Paul Kariya: “I think today we’re in a way better spot when I retired. Things are moving in the right direction, but those targeted head shots are still in the game. And for me, there’s no reason to have that in the game.”

--------

Paul Kariya, clearly a woke millennial, who doesn't respect the history of the game.

 

[ArGarBarGar]

I don't know why there isn't a zero-tolerance policy regarding fouls to the head. End this nonsense and don't even let minor offenses to the head go unpunished.

 

[Winger98]

I don't know why there isn't a zero-tolerance policy regarding fouls to the head. End this nonsense and don't even let minor offenses to the head go unpunished.

well, then the NHL might be forced into some sort of consistency with it and the youtube warriors dissecting every penalty and whether or not there was a connection with the chest/shoulder/whatever. The latter shouldn't matter but it would just get annoying.

 

[MBH]

The logic here is silly because you are taking a sport that's main goal has quite literally has nothing to do with physical contact. You could adapt the rules to remove fighting, severely punish head contact, and allow for the standard push and shove and everything about the actual point of the sport would be the exact same. I'm not saying that's what I want, but the fact that you think that agreeing to the potential (please note that this says potential) for significant (and largely preventable) brain and other physical trauma is the core requirement to participate is just unfortunate. Yes there are risks to participating in contact sports, but that doesn't mean we can't mitigate those risks.

I think fighting and hitting and all this stuff has a place in the sport, and I would be upset to see it go. I just want to see it governed better by the league. If you and Bench decide to drop the gloves off the opening faceoff, I will gladly watch because you both know what you are getting into. What I want to see the league do is ensure that players don't have the freedom to clip someone with an elbow, drive someone's head through the boards, bounce a head off the ice, jump an unwilling participant from behind. And if those things do happen, I want to see the league step up to the plate and punish it accordingly. That is the point of having a department dedicated to player safety. You keep players safe by putting a stop to problems before they become problems, not wait until the worst case scenario happens. Most players don't want to deal with the ramifications of repeated brain injuries, and that should be the primary focus of DoPS.

When Panarin jumped on Wilson's back, he KNEW what he was getting into.
It's why I respect what he did.
I don't have any respect for what Wilson did. The should punch. The "wearing the belt" pose.
But I simply believe it wasn't that dangerous.
The most dangerous part of the exchange was the Panarin takedown. Which isn't even't that bad because Panarin jumped on his back while he was engaged with Strome.

It was a giant, Sean-Avery-Style nuthing burger, in terms of the DOPS getting involved.
I could have supported 1-2 games.

But the f***ing outrage all over here, Twitter and Reddit? I hope it's more performative bullshit. The same kind of bullshit Wilson displayed.
Because if people actually think what they saw were, in the words of the Rangers, "horrific acts of violence," then I'm not sure how this league can continue to go with the types of risks these guys face every day.

You're going to have to institute soccer-style/baseball-style/basketball-style rules.

Frankly, from what I've seen from DOPS, they've got it right this week.
0 games for Wilson.
2 games for Gost.
And now a hearing for Buchnevich. I think Buch thought Mantha was gonna go at him so he struck first. Which is exactly what Redmond always says players need to do to protect themselves. So that's going to be interesting.

But the way to gain friends on the Internet is to complain about the DOPS wheel of justice, blah, blah blah.

 

[MBH]

To you what he did wasn't that dangerous. Clearly, to a whole bunch of hockey fans, commentators, etc. what he did was dangerous and was out of bounds. Does that make what Ghost or Buchnevich did any more or less dangerous? No, I don't think these things should be graded on a curve, and it doesn't make what Wilson did any less dangerous. And if you can't see the potential danger in those exchanges, or how out of the norm Wilson's reaction was, I'm not sure we have any reason to talk about this.

You've wanted to lean into some sort of historical context with this but what was seen as okay twenty-five years ago doesn't matter now. You keep revisiting this idea of "horrific violence," which is a level of violence I'm not sure you'd want associated with hockey under any circumstances. You bring up this idea that younger people are the ones driving the issue with this...yeah, they probably are. Because they are the ones who are going to be buying tickets, jerseys, etc. going forward. They are going to be the ones deciding if their kids can play. Yeah, things change. The level of acceptable danger shifts.

You can push this narrative that people are only going for the clicks or whatever but even if they are just going for the clicks...well, they're getting clicks because the message is resonating.

1) You look at the video and tell me where the "danger" was to Buch. Shot to the shoulder from a guy wearing a glove. Cheap? yes. Dangerous? No.
2) The dangerous play was the Panarin takedown. But frankly, considering panarin jumped on Wilson's back as Wilson was already engaged by Strome, Panarin brought that on. If I jump on Bob Probert's back while he's scrumming with someone, that's my decision. If all I get is taken down, like Panarin did, I count myself lucky.
3) I keep revisiting the idea of "horrific acts of violence" because that's the nonsensical, hysterical language used by the f***ing New York Rangers. The kind of language that real hockey people (John Davidson) distance themselves from. The kind of hyperbole that exists in almost every conversation about the incident.
4) Popular messaging doesn't make it right. It usually indicates willingness for people to let others do thinking for them.

 

[Bench]

4) Popular messaging doesn't make it right. It usually indicates willingness for people to let others do thinking for them.

Serial contrarian defends his entire existence.

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