“Close the gate! Close the gate!”
Don Cherry couldn’t agree more with those words, yelled out by an official during the first period of Wednesday’s Game 3 between the Tampa Bay Lightning and Pittsburgh Penguins.
Cherry has long been an advocate of protecting players from injury caused by bench doors being left open, and Tuesday’s incident involving St. Louis Blues defenceman Patrik Berglund has resurfaced the debate.
Cherry fears the worst may happen before change is made.
“Somebody’s gonna get killed by those gates if they don’t get it straightened out,” Cherry said during Wednesday’s Coach’s Corner. “You’ve gotta get ‘em closed.”
In Berglund’s case, he was fine and did return after heading to the dressing room immediately following the collision; but Cherry pointed to a long list of cases — the most serious of which was Bryan Marchment’s head-first collision in 1997, which led to him being stretchered off the ice — as he called on NHL commissioner Gary Bettman to spur some change.
“Somebody, Gary, if somebody’s watching, these guys are getting millions of dollars, they’re their star players, somebody get on the door,” Cherry said. “You could have the stick boy. I had the trainer [do it] and he’d encourage [the players] as they’re coming off. Somebody’s gotta get on it.”
Berglund’s incident also brought on a discussion from the panel Tuesday night, with Nick Kypreos questioning if the doors are really necessary.
“The line changes come from the middle of the bench,” said Kypreos. “Which means that you’re hopping over the boards anyway and I’m sitting there going is it worth the risk anymore to have these things still?”
According to Elliotte Friedman, the NHL has considered possible solutions involving getting rid of the doors altogether. But as Friedman pointed out, the possibility of other dangers — “skates are so sharp now you just don’t want them flying in all directions,” he said — stopped general managers from following up.
