On Day 2 of their annual meetings, NHL GMs began to reshape exactly what constitutes a legal hit.
BOCA RATON, Fla. -- In the end, hockey's headshot issue remains a lesson in physics, the rare science class that even a sports writer and former player can pass.
"Defenders defend standing up. Forwards attack bent over," said NHL VP Brendan Shanahan.
He embodied in eight words exactly why we feel -- and thus far, the National Hockey League's 30 general managers agree -- that an automatic penalty for contacting the head is not what the game requires.
Stand up. How tall are you?
OK. Now pretend you're carrying a puck.
How tall are you now?
OK -- start carrying that puck. If you're not leading with your head, you're not going north-south, the kind of hit that the NHL GMs refused to give away this week at the Boca Beach Resort in Florida, to those who would penalize any and all contact between the defender's shoulder and the puck carrier's head.
"To give a reference point," began Toronto GM Brian Burke, "you all remember Phil Kessel's first game as a Leaf? Mattias Ohlund stepped up and drilled him; got him right in the head with a shoulder. We want that hit in the game.
"Phil has to be more alert and keep his head up. He didn't get a concussion on that play, but even if he did, I'd have the same view. We want that hit in our game."
Of course, Burke's star picked himself up and skated away. Ray Shero's best player, Sidney Crosby, received a far subtler blow to the head and hasn't played since Jan. 5.
Shero, the Pittsburgh Penguins GM, was one of few doves here looking for a blanket penalty on hits to the head. He sounded a tad disappointed that the progress stopped where it did.
"It doesn't change the way we feel about head hits being out of the game, zero tolerance for them," Shero said. "At the same time some of the things moving forward from the last couple of days are going to be a positive step."
On Day 1 of their annual meetings the GMs learned that 44 percent of concussions this season occurred on legal hits. So, on Day 2 they began to reshape exactly what constitutes a legal hit, defining the battlefront on which the headshot battle will be further fought.
With the invention of Rule 48 a year ago, the most dangerous of the open-ice concussion causers -- those blind-side, back-pressure hits -- have been drastically reduced. Now, they'll take a run at those hits that occur below the goal line and along the boards -- the ones where concussions result from a player's noggin bouncing off the glass; where the victim is stationary, and the hitter is bearing down hard and fast.
"In my breakout group, the rule for boarding and for charging was right on the video," Shero said. "Reading it basically line by line we said, 'OK, now all we have to do is enforce it.' The rules are in the rule book to enforce. We just have to be more aggressive in enforcing them."
Wait a second. Did he suggest that enforcing rules that are already in the rule book could solve the problem?
I'm starting to get déjà vu...
"Five years ago we wanted to address hooking and holding and slashing and crosschecking. I think it's safe to say ... those penalties have (ostensibly) been eliminated from the game," Tampa GM Steve Yzerman said. "Out of that, there's a lot more physical play in the game that was an unforeseen by-product of it. Now we've got an issue with players getting hurt, particularly with hits along the boards which aren't direct blows to the head.
"If you define charging and you define boarding ... now we're going to have to look harder at (them) because players are getting hurt in these situations."
Rule 41.1 - Boarding: "(When a player) checks an opponent in such a manner that causes the opponent to be thrown violently in the boards."
Rule 42 - Charging: "A player who skates or jumps into, or charges an opponent in any manner."
The boarding rule is fairly clear, but charging? If you can't skate into an opponent, how exactly are you supposed to get there?
Call a cab?
A committee of Yzerman, Shanahan, Stars GM Joe Nieuwendyk and NHL manager Rob Blake is tasked with putting a fine point on all of this, so that heightened enforcement of the rules -- and suspensions for those who break them -- can be in place for the start of the 2011-12 season.
It's not an outright ban on blows to the head, as the people who gathered outside of Montreal's Bell Centre Tuesday night in protest of the violent state of the game would no doubt have wanted.
This, however, was how far the GMs were prepared to go -- for now. And if it's not far enough for you, then Washington Capitals head coach Bruce Boudreau has some advice:
"If you don't like it, don't come to the games."
Hear, hear.
Mark Spector is the lead columnist for Sportsnet.ca
Follow me on Twitter.com @SportsnetSpec
