I’ve extra sympathy for George Parros and the Division of Participant Security than the typical hockey fan does. It’s not simple and even attainable to find out the correct suspension size for each single soiled hit. How do you divine intent? How a lot weight do you afford course of vs. final result? Does the Eggshell Cranium doctrine apply? Is recklessness simply as unhealthy as malice? How do you apply consistency throughout your rulings—the No. 1 criticism of DoPS—when each hit is as particular person as a snowflake? After which, after all, irrespective of the substance of a ruling, it will likely be derided by some phase of followers as too lenient, and by one other as too punitive. It is an unwinnable train, as a result of almost each hit has some mitigating or complicating issue that requires utilizing particular person judgment.
However each every so often, successful comes alongside with out a saving grace—successful so pointless or malignant that each one observers agree upon the necessity to punish it harshly. One such hit occurred within the third interval of Thursday’s Islanders-Canadiens sport, when Montreal ahead Brendan Gallagher laid out Isles defenseman Adam Pelech with a traditional chicken-wing.
Pelech left the ice and didn’t return. Gallagher was assessed a serious and advised to hit the showers. The Islanders, down 3-1, scored twice on the following energy play to tie the sport, however finally fell 4-3 in Patrick Roy’s return to Montreal. All that was left to do was await the DoPS response.
This felt fairly clear. Gallagher made no try to play the puck, or to play Pelech’s physique. He went out of his method to ship the hit, and to the top. (Pelech missed 21 video games final season with a concussion, for what that is value.) Gallagher’s teammates did not supply a lot in his protection afterward. The Isles did not even really feel the necessity to decry the hit; it was simply that apparent. “I feel all of us noticed what occurred,” Roy stated. Even the bloodthirstiest “allow them to play” corners of the hockey web figured this might be an enormous suspension. Eight video games? Twelve? Twenty?
Everybody overestimated DoPS:
It will be Gallagher’s first suspension in his 12-year profession, which is unquestionably what saved him from lacking extra time. I do not assume that ought to matter right here. I feel some hits are simply so completely faraway from legitimate hockey actions that you have to convey the hammer down. Exhibits what I do know, I suppose.