Jim Kelley

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

NHL general managers may have opened Pandora's box with their movement on head shots.

Dear General Manager;

Please excuse the mass e-column here, but I needed to reach out to all 30 of you at once and with a simple question: are you happy with what you’ve created?

I ask this because in the wake of your newly proposed rule, the one that attempts to limit the lateral hit, the back pressure hit (whatever the heck that is) and the so-called blind-side hit to the head, you went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the straight-on hit, the so-called north-south hit, the much-loved Scott Stevens hit, the one where a player can lay a shoulder into the head of an opponent as long as he comes right at him and the opponent fulfils the now gospel obligation to "keep one’s head up at all times" directive, you’ve made James Wisniewski's Wednesday night hit on Brent Seabrook perfectly legal.

Are you happy with that?

Oh sure there might be a charging call thrown in there somewhere. After all, Wisniewski came some 30-40 feet to toss his shoulder into the face of his former teammate and friend, but under the rule that your group constructed, the one that you dumped into NHL executive vice president and hockey operations director Colin Campbell and made his life a living hell in the process, it’s a clean hit.

I mean Seabrook was upright, right? I mean he saw Wisniewski coming, right? And God bless the little devil Wisniewski did keep his elbow down didn’t he?

Is this what you want? Really?

Are you saying that this is what we need in order to keep hitting in the game?

Sure looks like it.

Go ahead guys, look at the hit. Look at it 1,000 times if you like, because it is at least in part a product of your creation. Under the way you guys have set this up, Wisniewski knew he was charging, but under the rules of the game nothing else was illegal nor will it be when –or now perhaps even if—your rule comes into play.

Think about it, didn’t the officials get it right? They assessed a minor for charging and they might have tacked on a major, but that’s all they could do because despite the fact that Wisniewski appeared to be head hunting for all the world to see, he wasn’t doing anything that you guys don’t want him to do. He didn’t come from behind, or from the side and there certainly was no "back pressure" except maybe to the back of Seabrook’s head when it was whip lashed into the glass.

Now I’ll admit that under the unwritten rules of the game we all know Seabrook had it coming because he went for the high and hard one on Wisniewski’s teammate, Corey Perry, just moments before and the code says that can’t go unpunished. I mean if Wisnewski didn’t respond in the perfect way in which you’ve set up the new rule he couldn’t expect to even raise his head again in the NHL. Wouldn’t his general manager go all Peter Chiarelli on him and become upset at the "tepid response" the way the Boston Bruins were called out for going soft on Pittsburgh's Matt Cooke after he took out Marc Savard under the same "clean-play" umbrella?

I mean none of us want pansy stuff in our game, right? Heck, if we knuckle under to that, than all of Todd Bertuzzi's trail-blazing work on Steve Moore would be for naught and none of us would have even the slightest interest in Thursday’s Boston-Pittsburgh game in Boston where Cooke is expected to get his and the mouth-breathers are so breathless in their anticipation that we can’t quite fathom why NBC hasn’t asked to have this moved to Game of the Week status.

After all, this is what we all want, right?

Now I could be wrong about all this. It could just be that you guys were ducking the issue of a strong rule with much needed teeth that would put a real scare into the hearts and minds of players, even the players who are coached to do this kind of hitting, and that you allowed yourself an out when you tossed in that line about being subject to review from Colin Campbell’s office.

But that has seldom worked in the past and the way things have been going this month one has to wonder if Campbell won’t quit or be fired before your rule actually goes into full effect. Campbell let two of these slide already (Cooke and Michael Richards of Philadelphia on Florida’s David Booth) and most of you –judging from your silence at least—seem OK with that in large part because the hit was within the rules as you saw them.

If not, well, wouldn’t you have put in a rule that might protect all players, including Seabrook? Wouldn’t a rule that said any blow to the head of any player was a penalty and anyone who delivered one would be subject to an escalating scale of justice, say 10 games for a first offence, 15 for a second and 20 for a third no review necessary?

Would it be so wrong to protect players, players who by the way are crying out for some sort of protection or at least some semblance of knowledge as to what constitutes a penalty for deliberate attempt to injure. I know this would collapse your carefully constructed "cone of catastrophe" regarding blows to the head, but then you could at least argue that you have a multi-million dollar property on the ice and that losing him to a low-level thug or a defenseman who can actually play the game makes no sense. Not to you, not to the over-charged customer who actually might want to see something other than a well-executed stretcher operator carrying said player off the ice.

I for one actually enjoy seeing Sidney Crosby and players like him skate, and I don’t particularly relish watching him being taken down from behind with an ugly –let’s break his leg, ankle or knee play, for a player whose already been suspended more times than a pair of pants.

Am I alone in that regard?

You could have done something different, but you held to status quo. You threw the whole thing into Colin Campbell’s lap and now he’s in Boston trying to defuse what could be an in-arena riot while trying to make suspensions out of hits like the one ones we saw in Chicago and the one New Jersey’s Rod Pelley laid on Alex Goligoski. Even though nobody seems to be doing anything wrong (just a little push eh, not unlike the one Alexander Ovechkin laid on a different Chicago defenceman, Brian Campbell) seems to be everyone’s excuse.

I suppose Colin Campbell will figure something out. I mean we all know Ovechkin was a repeat offender and Wisniewski had a record and so did Cooke, so wait a minute, that argument’s not going to hold up.

But then that’s Campbell’s problem, right? You guys studied the issue for months and you reviewed the presentation about the growing amount of hitting in the game, especially hits to the head and you guys carefully crafted the rule that allows for continued carnage unabated until at least next season, and then left it to Hockey Ops, or is that Hockey Oops, to live with.

I heard Mike Murphy, Colin Campbell’s right hand man, say on the radio Wednesday that Campbell is a "tough guy" and then immediately change that designation to "strong guy." I also heard him hint that maybe Campbell has had enough of friends like you guys (and who needs enemies), the obvious implication being that he might quit or perhaps even be fired. Who knows, maybe Campbell will be forced into a situation like those that befell Bryan Lewis or Andy Van Hellemond , no real proof of having done anything wrong, but no longer working in the game they loved either.

I would argue that Colin Campbell doesn’t deserve that, but then I guess he didn’t deserve what you guys laid on him either.

And so I’m wondering guys: Are you happy with that as well?