It’s been a rough year for NHL disciplinarians.  After a few years of skirting around the head shot issue, the dinosaurs of the NHL finally came around and tweaked the rules. Unfortunately the way that they passively handled the issue has only created more confusion for not only the fans, but for the players playing the game as to what they are allowed or not allowed to do. In the big picture of making the game of hockey better, it shouldn’t be about taking away “head shots”, but about taking away dangerous plays out of the game of hockey that lead to concussions and other serious injuries. The most recent incident has come on hockey’s biggest stage with Vancouver Canuck defenseman Aaron Rome knocking Nathan Horton out with a hit. If you ever grew up watching Don Cherry’s Rock and Sockem tapes, you will recognize this hit, especially in the early years of the series, as one that was regularly celebrated by the infamous CBC commentator with his catch phrase “Keep Yer Head Up!” Think back to one of the more famous hits by Scott Stevens of the New Jersey Devils on Eric Lindros and you’ll see similarities, but the game has changed, and that once celebrated hit is now part of the lengthiest suspension in Stanley Cup history.

How the league has got to this point has been the result of misguided leadership and stubbornness. The NHL top brass can sometimes feel like an old boys club, so when it comes to radically making rule changes, it can be a bit difficult. It all starts with a guy who should have never been in the job in the first place and that’s Colin Campbell. Talk to executives and most will tell you about Colly “the good guy”, but that “good guy” just happened to police a game in a league where his son plays. This happened five years ago when Gregory Campbell became a regular in the NHL, but no one really seemed to notice or care, until emails were leaked that showed Colin Campbell actually acting like every other “hockey dad” out there, and showed that he clearly couldn’t be nonpartisan. Yet he kept his job, and the calamity of errors continued. The issue has blown up this year because Gregory Campbell got traded to the Boston Bruins, a team with not only had a shot at the Stanley Cup, but one that still plays right on the edge of the rules like they did in the ‘70’s when the aforementioned Don Cherry was the Coach. So in effort to keep things fair they gave any calls involving the Boston Bruins to his buddy Mike Murphy. It’s like for some reason you’re not allowed to drive across one bridge to get into the city, so you give the keys to your friend who’s nervous because he doesn’t know your car too well, so he drives it cautiously not wanting to do any damage. Murphy predictably was called upon many times this year, and almost seemed to fumble the calls every time. Sucker punching became a big issue when Todd Bertuzzi clocked Steve Moore back in ’04, and ever since the league seemed to come down hard, yet Murphy conveniently turned an eye when Milan Lucic suckered Freddy Meyer. Murphy’s biggest gaffe however came when couldn’t find reason to suspend Bruin captain Zdeno Chara when he shoved Max Pacioretty into a stanchion breaking a vertebra in his neck.

With the no call on Chara they seemed to be saying that even with a catastrophic incident that causes injury, they don’t want to always jump on a suspension based on injury but on incident. Both Chara and Rome got 5 minute majors for interference and game misconducts, and both Pacioretty and Horton will miss time, but it’s only Rome getting suspended, a historic suspension at that. It shouldn’t be any clearer that there is an egregious bias happening when it comes to these Boston Bruins, and it has nothing to do with trying to police head shots or clean up the game, but has to do with the incompetent and inconsistent NHL top brass. They have waited all year, and have waited until Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final to make their statement and unfortunately Aaron Rome will have to be the scapegoat even though there were previous incidents when the league could have done something significant. The thing is Murphy shouldn’t even have been in this position; it wasn’t his job to do. Faced with a crucial decision on Rome, Murphy called the GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs Brian Burke for his opinion. The train of incompetence just keeps rolling. Even though Burke used to be the head disciplinarian of the NHL, he’s also a rival GM that may have a vested interest in the outcome of this Stanley Cup. Sure if the Bruins do win the Cup, one of his first round picks will go down from 29 to 30, but more likely, Burke would want nothing more than to see the Bruins beat the Aquilini Family owned Canucks who ran Burke out of town in 2004.

The Aaron Rome hit is one that many people believe should be worthy of a suspension, but consensus is showing that 4 games is too much. Perhaps it was just an easy decision because Aaron Rome is a depth defenseman and no one is really going to miss him. Rome’s play was not inherently dirty, it was just a late hit, if Horton has his head up, there’s probably not even a penalty on the play, but the result was a concussion which is unfortunate, and something Rome should know all about. In Round 3 for the Canucks facing the Sharks, there were two dirty hits from behind that didn’t warrant any suspensions. One was Ben Eager on Daniel Sedin and the other was Jamie McGinn on Aaron Rome which resulted in Rome missing two games with a concussion. Two more dirty plays that the league didn’t feel were worthy of suspensions.

It’s gotten to the point where it has become impossible to figure out how the NHL will rule on suspensions. Isn’t it supposed to be as clear as penalties on the ice? When we have multiple angles on every play, it should be clear to everyone with sufficient examination time for everyone to figure out how many games a guy should or shouldn’t get. There has never been a time that calls for a committee of people to oversee suspensions than right now, so that it doesn’t fall onto one person. Not surprisingly the league has given the job to one man in Brendan Shanahan, a player who has played with or against the majority of the players in the league. So there won’t be any chance of any more bias, right?

Originally posted at Betfair.net