Jim Kelley

Jim Kelley writes regularly on the NHL for Sportsnet.ca and can be heard on Primetime Sports on the FAN590.

If Sean Avery can be suspended retroactively, why can't Matt Cooke?

What if, and I admit this is a big if, but what if hockey was played with balls instead of pucks? If that were the case, wouldn’t National Hockey League players have to show something?

I mention this not in the hopes of forever being remembered as a wise asterisk, but as someone who doesn’t believe that the rule proposed by NHL general managers to even begin to eliminate head shots as we know them is something they got completely right and workable.

And that being the case, what if the players, be they as an association or even as the five-member voting block on the NHL’s largely impotent competition committee , stood up and delivered a loud and emphatic "no" to the head shot rule the GMs constructed.

Wouldn’t that be something?

Quite frankly I just don’t get the NHL and especially the NHLPA these days.

It was said this week that the NHL couldn’t possibly enforce the newly proposed rule that appears designed to do something regarding blows to the head from a specific number of angles to a specific portion of the attacking player’s anatomy, because the proposed rule has to go before the competition committee and then on to the board of governors before it can be implemented.

Why that is has always confused me, especially in light of the fact that the league drew up and implemented it’s "Hey Fatso" rule, that said New York Rangers forward Sean Avery couldn’t waive a stick in front of New Jersey Devils goaltender Martin Brodeur’s face, demean his stated playing weight and call him other names, without ever going to the players’ association or the board of govenors.

Not only did the NHL come up with the "Hey Fatso" rule within hours of Avery’s perceived infraction, but they implemented it during the course of that same playoff series between the Rangers and the Devils, setting a record for rule book rewrites in the process.

I could cite other spur of the moment rules, including the declaration from commissioner Gary Bettman that Avery was obligated to serve a six-game suspension (six more games than Mike Richards and Matt Cooke received for their vicious and intentioned hits to the head of David Booth and Marc Savard respectively) for making coarse remarks about former girlfriends who take up with some of his opponents, but space, even on the Internet, is not infinite.

Still, it was interesting to see NHL executive vice president and director of hockey operations Colin Campbell twisting in the soft Florida breeze while explaining how the league is bound by procedure and as a result, players who have scores to settle with opponents or simply want to cash one out with a blow to the head in the hopes of enhancing their challenge to keep or get to a playoff spot, need to get their hits to the head of an opponent in now and in the 20-some games remaining or forever hold their respective pieces.

OK, he didn’t really say that last part, but that will be the way it plays out.

"I know it's not something that Boston fans, or hockey fans would like to hear," said Campbell regarding the hit on Marc Savard and, by extension, the one on Booth. "They want justice. We feel we have to be consistent and do what we feel is right and hopefully we've gone to a place in our meetings today that we can eradicate plays like this in the future."

Not now, that would be too logical. Let’s put it off until next season when everyone who’s recovered from a concussion will perhaps be on equal footing.

What the league is saying is it will go after insults to roly-poly goaltenders (who have since slimed down) and to offended starlets and the players they date and will do so immediately and with a vengeance. Savard and Booth and all the others who have been or will be carried out on a stretcher, well, they can wait until protocol is followed.

The league is also seeming to state that if you are attacked from behind or from the side or in the "cone of catastrophe" your attacker will possibly be penalized with maybe a minor or major penalty and might be subject of an off-ice review. Of course if he comes at you the way Alexander Ovechkin took out Jaromir Jagr in the Olympics, with a shoulder to the head while Jagr was alleged to be looking in the proper direction, well that’s your fault Jagr, you needed to see the bus coming.

And what do we learn from that? Well for starters we know that the GMs want Colin Campbell and his supplementary discipline department to have the final I say: "Hey PA, do you want to weigh in on any of this or just keep paying for departed executive directors until Alan Eagleson freezes over?"

The PA has been enormously silent on issues regarding player safety since its members ousted Paul Kelly as executive director. Kelly, you might recall, actually challenged the GMs (reportedly with the backing of a player poll) to devise a rule that had real teeth regarding the members of the association who felt brain-rattling hits to the heads of their fellow association members were OK.

And never to the best of my recollection have they ever spoken out individually or as a group to point a finger of blame at the coaches who both condone and teach the head-hunting tactic or the general managers –the same general managers who by and large don’t want any hitting taken out of the game if they can help it—who employ them.

Hello, it’s players who are taking the hits here and while I acknowledge the NHL is not a cookie factory and that hard hits and tough play is something they all knowingly sign on to, there should be some form of collective voice of reason here.

Players, especially ex-players who’ve gone on to be failed coaches or general managers, make mention seemingly every day that hits and hurts are part of the game and that sometimes a veteran will have to have a knee replaced or a shoulder realigned. All well good and true, but that pithy player-turned-administrator-turned broadcaster never mentions that unlike a knee or even a hip, a brain can’t be replaced.

Brain injuries are serious injuries and injuries that may impact a player not only during his playing days, but well into his post-hockey life. Surely someone "who’s played the game" needs to speak to that.

But until that day happens, we are left with what ifs.

What if Ryan Miller, a member of the competition committee and a silver-medal carrying Olympian were to stand up and say the rule simply isn’t good enough or strong enough and that he and the other competition committee members want better.

What if Sidney Crosby, the hero of Canada’s gold-medal effort and a Stanley Cup champion, were to rise and in words much stronger than he used earlier in the week, demand that hits like the one teammate Matt Cooke unleashed on Marc Savard were unacceptable and even the one that Ovechkin delivered unto Jagr was simply too dangerous to be allowed.

A quick aside here; there were published reports that Jagr suffered a concussion from the Ovechkin hit and that the IOC was prepared to suspend Ovechkin but that the NHL lobbied against it. If that is true, no one is saying, but it wasn’t denied after it saw the light of day. Maybe if Crosby or someone else of his stature took a stand, we would see a rule with a bit more teeth then the one the GMs proposed.

To be fair, NHLPA spokesman Jonathan Weatherdon did issue a statement from the still leaderless NHLPA in which he said: "We look forward to receiving and reviewing the general managers' proposal. Hits to the head, including blind-side hits are important issues facing the NHLPA membership. In order to appropriately address these issues, the NHLPA's competition committee members will thoroughly review this proposal and gather feedback from the membership prior to the committee's meeting this summer."

All well and good, but for the record, when the committee met last summer it didn’t even discuss the much ballyhooed "ban on staged fighting" that the GMs proposed and the board of governors rubber stamped.

It would be nice if the players at least picked this latest rule apart for awhile and maybe even proposed a much tougher one, one that would protect their own.

Truth is even if they lost the fight, they could still have a ball regarding making an argument.