NHL - Hits to the Head

Off Topic
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hahaha…Scott Stevens. You are on the money with that one. The game is a changin’. Lindros shoud’ve kept his head up. I forgot about the Karia hit…it was a wild finish in that game.

With all the coverage in Canada this is getting they’re showing alot of these incidents to compare. One that stands out to me, can’t remember the player but he was skating along the boards trying to get to the puck. It was just out of his reach and he had to have seen the other guy lining him up. Give the guy credit for the effort but when he really stretched out for it he got clobbered. In my opinion he put himself in a horrible position. It’s happening more and more…like others have said previously.

42

[quote]hockechamp14 wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
FIFA is a bunch of pussies, and late is a matter of opinion in this case. If it was truly on the follow through of the shot (what put savard in the position) it couldn’t have been that late. I happen to be a big fan of savard by the way from when he played for my thrashers.

Oh, and the guy that compared this to the bertuzzi hit is an idiot. Bertuzzi was no where near the edge with what he did.

[/quote]
Yeah because playing hockey for 18 years and three years of junior I obviously know nothing about hockey.

My point was is that the line is crossed because hockey you play on the edge. Weather that line is crossed by an inch or a mile. Bert was trying to get him to fight, but a fuck up that big is another story.

I agree that you can’t police intent, but if you keep having hits like this and lose talented players, you no longer have a league, fan base, or revenue to keep paying the fucking goons who damage guys.

I blame Scott Stevens. Fuck you Scott Stevens, you ruin Kariya and Lindros — and now the league. Goddamn.[/quote]

I didn’t say that you don’t know hockey, I said your relation of this hit to bertuzzi was stupid. It was. There exist dumb hockey players.

You guys ever consider that it is part of the natural evolution of sport in general? Especially with contact sports. Not so much that the sport has changed as the physiology of the players. Guys get bigger and faster. Combining more mass with more speed is going to lead to people getting hurt. Football is the same way. Guys are so big, fast, and hit so hard, its a wonder someone isn’t hurt after every play. How many linemen in football retire with a limp?

But it even carries beyond contact sports. Look at pitching in baseball. throwing harder and faster means guys arms just don’t last. You just don’t see complete games and all of them have to have elbow/shoulder surgery eventually.

I think the evolution of the athlete is something a lot of sports are trying to deal with and it’s a tuff question.

If the hit would have been made by a smaller guy that wasn’t big enough to do damage, would you guys be calling for his suspension? If not isn’t this guy getting penalized for his size and strength?

Do you go about changing the sport to try to slow guys down or soften impacts. Something like restricter plates in nascar. Make the guys wear slower skates or softer pads or something?

43

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Do you go about changing the sport to try to slow guys down or soften impacts. Something like restricter plates in nascar. Make the guys wear slower skates or softer pads or something?[/quote]

I do think that the amount of protective padding and equipment that players wear today are part of the problem. Players can propel themselves and make hits that don’t have the same effects as if they didn’t have those pads.

44

[quote]mrw173 wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Do you go about changing the sport to try to slow guys down or soften impacts. Something like restricter plates in nascar. Make the guys wear slower skates or softer pads or something?[/quote]

I do think that the amount of protective padding and equipment that players wear today are part of the problem. Players can propel themselves and make hits that don’t have the same effects as if they didn’t have those pads.[/quote]

Exactly. See Rugby vs. Football.

45

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:

[quote]hockechamp14 wrote:

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
FIFA is a bunch of pussies, and late is a matter of opinion in this case. If it was truly on the follow through of the shot (what put savard in the position) it couldn’t have been that late. I happen to be a big fan of savard by the way from when he played for my thrashers.

Oh, and the guy that compared this to the bertuzzi hit is an idiot. Bertuzzi was no where near the edge with what he did.

[/quote]
Yeah because playing hockey for 18 years and three years of junior I obviously know nothing about hockey.

My point was is that the line is crossed because hockey you play on the edge. Weather that line is crossed by an inch or a mile. Bert was trying to get him to fight, but a fuck up that big is another story.

I agree that you can’t police intent, but if you keep having hits like this and lose talented players, you no longer have a league, fan base, or revenue to keep paying the fucking goons who damage guys.

I blame Scott Stevens. Fuck you Scott Stevens, you ruin Kariya and Lindros — and now the league. Goddamn.[/quote]

I didn’t say that you don’t know hockey, I said your relation of this hit to bertuzzi was stupid. It was. There exist dumb hockey players.

You guys ever consider that it is part of the natural evolution of sport in general? Especially with contact sports. Not so much that the sport has changed as the physiology of the players. Guys get bigger and faster. Combining more mass with more speed is going to lead to people getting hurt. Football is the same way. Guys are so big, fast, and hit so hard, its a wonder someone isn’t hurt after every play. How many linemen in football retire with a limp?

But it even carries beyond contact sports. Look at pitching in baseball. throwing harder and faster means guys arms just don’t last. You just don’t see complete games and all of them have to have elbow/shoulder surgery eventually.

I think the evolution of the athlete is something a lot of sports are trying to deal with and it’s a tuff question.

If the hit would have been made by a smaller guy that wasn’t big enough to do damage, would you guys be calling for his suspension? If not isn’t this guy getting penalized for his size and strength?

Do you go about changing the sport to try to slow guys down or soften impacts. Something like restricter plates in nascar. Make the guys wear slower skates or softer pads or something?[/quote]

A lot of it is the evolution of sports, not just the players bodies but the equipment as well. You could reduce a lot of the football injuries by changing the design of the shoulder pads and the facemasks. In the past, they didn’t have ultra-protective facemasks and you had a lot less leading with the head because if you led with your head, you broke your nose or cut up your face. At least the NFL routinely levies fines for hits to the head, unlike the NHL. I don’t know what you can do for hockey other than maybe allow more fighting again so that there are immediate repurcussions for guys like Cooke and Stevens at the hands of guys like Grimson and Probert.

As for pitchers in baseball, that’s less an evolution issue than it is ideological. There have always been guys who threw extremely hard and fast: Walter Johnson, Bob Feller, Herb Score and Nolan Ryan, to name a few. The difference is that those guys also knew how to pitch, as opposed to just throwing hard, and mixed up speeds and pitches extremely well. The kids coming up nowadays don’t learn how to properly pitch and they also get abused in HS and college with the frequency of starts. I also think there’s something to encouraging every kid to throw the same way using the “proper mechanics” even though every kid’s physiology is somewhat different.

Sports have come a long way, but some of it is regression.

DB