The annual World Junior Hockey tournament will kick off on Boxing Day and the IIHF (International Ice Hockey Federation) gets another chance to showcase its brand of hockey to fans around the world.
IIHF rules differ from the NHL in a number of ways, but three stand out immediately. Zero tolerance for head shots, fighting and goaltender interference. Regardless of circumstance, a head shot results either in a minor penalty with a 10 minute misconduct or 5 minute major plus a game misconduct and often a one-game suspension. Fighting costs a team a 5 minute major with a game misconduct and possible a one-game suspension. As for goaltender interference, play can be stopped for merely standing in the crease.
Despite what some might consider restrictive enforcement of these rules, World Junior Hockey is easily the most entertaining, face-paced and hard-hitting brand of hockey you will ever watch. Audiences for this tournament have grown at a rapid pace over the
25-year span that Canadian cable sports network TSN began covering the
event. Outside of national pride, its entertainment value alone is the main reason why people tune in.
Yet somehow this formula seems completely lost on the world's most watched ice hockey league, the NHL. So far this season, the league's lack of enforcement on rules governing player protection are an indication of a regression from previous years. Fans have witnessed more than a few uncalled head shots and it's been open season on goaltenders. Sports broadcasters still glorify fighting in their highlight packages, and we still hear the stoneage argument that we need bigger players to protect a team's stars.
It's time to call bullshit on this tacit acceptance and promotion of violence once and for all. The arguments are so old, so tired and so immature that it's actually becoming painful to read and hear. The evidence for the long-term effects of concussions is already out there and ignoring it doesn't make one right. In fact, all of the acts of violence I have cited thus far are against the rules in the NHL, but the league still lacks the courage to properly enforce them.
Sidney Crosby is one concussion away from ending a spectacular career and Carey Price is one net-crash away from the league losing one of the best goaltenders in their history. This seems to matter little to the NHL who would much rather kowtow to rubbernecking cretins, who've never come close to having 220 pounds of muscle come at them with sharpened skate blades, let alone endured a blow to the head from a fist the size of a Christmas ham.
The problem is, officials do not have the means to control the escalation of violence in a game because their punitive effect is negligible. A minor penaltly for running a goalie or an elbow to the head won't stop anyone from attempting to do it again. And can we please stop with these gray-area rules? Enough with debating about intent. Nobody asks when a player is tripped if the offender meant to do it (sometimes they didn't), such an argument is irrelevant to officials. Same should be true for contact with the head or running a goalie. At the professional level a player should know how to check without impacting the head or have to be told that goaltenders are vulnerable.
And for all the advocates of fighting, read this slowly and several times until you understand: Concussions result from a single, or repeated blows to the head. The long-term effects can be devastating. It is not okay.
It cannot be overstated that a serious or fatal injury will eventually occur because of something preventable and the league will have no choice but to take action to save face. Pretending this is not an eventuality is both ignorant and cowardly.
In many ways the NHL are the stewards of ice hockey. As such, they have a responsibility not only to protect and preserve the game, but to make it better. Continued inaction only serves to demonstrate that the NHL values greed over it's own players. I can only hope they wake up to this reality before it's too late.
