Mark Spector

Mark Spector is a columnist for sportsnet.ca

Expect the NHLPA to want any head shot rule to have a limit on the money a suspended player can lose

This is about credit. In every sense of the word.

The five players on the National Hockey League's Competition Committee will allow the NHL to push its new head shot standards trough for the remainder of this season and the playoffs. But they want a shot at shaping the new rule, and, we're betting, the supplementary discipline that goes along with it.

"We're looking for a band-aid to fix for the rest of the year in case something happens," Ottawa Senator Jason Spezza, a committee member, told media in Montreal Monday. "But for the long term I think we have to sit down together and find a better solution than just tweaking a little rule."

That's where the credit comes in.

The NHLPA is miffed that their guy, former executive director Paul Kelly, brought this head shot issue to the table a year ago, and the league did not act then. So what if the union fired Kelly a few months later? It was their idea, and before they allow the new rules on head shots to go through, the NHLPA wants to put its fingerprints on it.

"Following the completion of their review of the league's proposal, the NHLPA's Competition Committee members will be responding back to the NHL this week," the union said in a statement Monday.

And then there is the other part of the credit. The part that players like Alex Ovechkin and James Wisniewski may need after recently incurring six-figure fines.

The major deterrent in this new head shots rule just happens to be increased player suspensions -- and the considerably lighter paycheques that come with that.

No one is saying anything about this element, but we've believed all along that the NHLPA isn't wild about how much money increased suspensions cost its members.

Remember, teams still pay the salary, but it goes into a fund for former players in need. Then the team must pay the player called up to replace the suspended player, as does the team whose player suffered an injury on the play in question.

But the union's history speaks for itself. It has always spent more time and effort defending the Matt Cookes than it has protecting the Marc Savards.

So they'll digest the rule change for the rest of this season and playoffs, but this summer the NHLPA wants to reopen the discussion. And that discussion -- mark my words -- will include some limit on how much money a player can lose in one of these suspensions.

Why would we think that? Because history tells us that, for this group, it comes down to the paycheque. Every single time.

The paycheque is why Bob Goodenow couldn't keep this union from folding up like San Jose in the springtime during the last lockout. And the paycheque is why the union sits in on the hearing to limit the suspension, then at a time like this, drags its feet on a rule change that is meant to save the careers of people like Keith Primeau, Adam Deadmarsh and the Lindros brothers.

"It has to be something that's talked about. It just seems everything's been sprung on (us)," Spezza said on Monday. "It's just hard to find the proper language and the right rule."

In concert with and at the behest of the NHLPA, the league has staged an extensive, multi-year study on the issue of head shots. You, the reader, knows more than anyone else how long this issue has been before the hockey world; how many cries for correction have come from each and every corner of the game.

Does anyone seriously believe that this group of five players on the Competition Committee (Spezza, L.A.'s Jeff Halpern, Phoenix's Mathieu Schneider, Buffalo's Ryan Miller, and Chicago's Brian Campbell) has decreed that the issue itself requires more dialogue?

No, when Spezza refers to "the proper language and the right rule," we're betting he's talking about finding a way to discipline players without costing them so much money.

Just wait until the NHLPA finds a new executive director -- and Lord help the game if it is the militant union czar Donald Fehr -- and they get down to discussing this issue. The union's concern won't be the angle of impact, or the re-defining the term "repeat offender."

It will be all about finding a way to throw an eight-game suspension at James Wisniewski, without docking him eight games' pay.