They said that? Like "This is a perfectly legal hit but since someone got injured we are suspending him."
Where?
Edit: Okay you are flat out mistaken. DOPS said "This is boarding." You can hear the guy say it yourself:
Wilson suspended seven games for Capitals by NHL Player Safety
First of all, I wasn't talking about one hit, or this one hit, so your quote was out of context. I was talking about the premise that injury should factor into legality when something like hitting is concerned. It's a flawed approach.
Second, here's the relevant quote from DoPS via a link:
"While there are aspects of this hit that may skirt the line between suspendable and not suspendable, it is the totality of the circumstances that cause this play to merit supplemental discipline," the Department of Player Safety explainer video states. "What separates this hit from others is the direct and significant contact to a defenseless player's face and head causing a violent impact with the glass. This is a player with a substantial disciplinary record taking advantage of an opponent who is in a defenseless position and doing so with significant force."
They're admitting that they could just as easily let this go but because it's Tom Wilson they're issuing a suspension. They're also ignoring the fact that Carlo dropped his head, and Wilson didn't give any indication of intentionally smashing his head into the glass.
The wording of the Boarding rule is extremely broad and as such any "violent" hit could be penalized. Increasing subjective measures of "violence" or even "attempt to injure" can scale up the penalization. But what hit isn't "violent"?
If the rules are created that way, to allow for the inevitable consequences of hits, then how can anyone be blamed for engaging in the same practices the rest of the league employ? What's to stop any player from pushing that limit of contact? And what is the point of a hit that isn't "violent" enough to knock a guy off the puck, or otherwise have some impact on play?
So there's a lot of leeway built into the rule because the people who wrote it understood how difficult it is to remove injury and violence from the sport, and that some level of it is going to have to be tolerated.
Those arguing for punitive action based on assumptions of intent to injure, or some magical power that TW is presumed to have to deliver "borderline legal" hits when measured against a rule that's intentionally going to make EVERY SINGLE HIT "borderline", can only be arguing for ALL hits to be removed if they're arguing for removal of injury from the game as a result of hitting. There is no other way, which is why the rule is vague, broad, and places some responsibility on the player being hit.
By the rule this was probably at worst a 2 minute penalty that happened to result in injury. So it could easily, by the rule, have been an "otherwise legal hit" depending on the subjective interpretations of the terms of the rule, again as the NHL admits to be vague and open-ended.
