Maybe next year the diagram of the rink in the NHL rulebook will be updated to include designations for the offensive zone, the defensive zone, the neutral zone … and the kill zone.
You know, the kill zone — the area behind the net where the league now is on record explicitly condoning a shoulder to the head of an unsuspecting, defenseless player, as articulated in a statement by NHL VP Colin Campbell, who quite obviously has lost his mind.
“When Rule 48 [Illegal Check to the Head] was unanimously adopted by the General Managers in March 2010, there was no intention to make this type of shoulder hit to the head illegal,” Campbell said in a statement he released in an attempt to explain why he had not suspended Raffi Torres for his blow to the head of Brent Seabrook in Game 3 of the Vancouver-Chicago series. “In fact, at that time, we distributed a video to all players and teams that showed a similar hit from an attacking forward coming from the opposite direction behind the net and stated that this is a legal play.”
Imagine, in the year 2011, when we all are just beginning to understand how much we do not know about the ramifications of head shots and brain injuries, the NHL has carved out an area of the ice where it’s open season on players’ heads — whether or not the athletes have the puck, whether or not they have a chance to defend themselves.
Slapshots has learned that the NHLPA is irate over Campbell’s statement and the NHL’s position on the type of play that resulted in a concussion for Seabrook. A well-placed source, who declined to go on the record, told us this week that no one within the union had ever heard of such a policy.
The PA intends to use its representation on the increasingly irrelevant competition committee to attempt to craft a rule this summer that would explicitly outlaw the Torres’ hit that concussed the Blackhawks’ first-pair defensemen.
Really, though, what’s the point when the man in charge (with, it must be stressed, the full support of his employers on Sixth Avenue) spends his time searching for loopholes in the rulebook to enable predators rather than applying Rule 21.1 to protect the vast majority of players who are — now by definition — targets in the crosshairs.
This is Rule 21.1: “A match penalty shall be imposed on any player who deliberately attempts to injure or who deliberately injures another player in any manner.”
Unless there is a secret amendment to 21.1 that reads, “Except in the area behind the net and except when the play in question is a shoulder to the head of a player with his head down about the play the puck,” there is no explanation, none at all, that would explain Campbell and the league’s failure to apply the statute against Torres.
When a player targets an opponent’s head, he is deliberately attempting to injure him. That’s it. There’s no wiggle room, no other explanation, no room for debate.
This is Matt Cooke-Marc Savard all over again. This is Campbell acting as an attorney for legal aid, combing the statutes for technicalities to free a client charged with a felony, rather than the NHL executive charged with enforcing discipline in the game.
Lost in technicalities, Campbell misses the larger picture. It is the league’s responsibility to protect the greater good, not serial headhunters like Torres, who had just returned from a suspension for a headshot.
Campbell’s abdication of that responsibility is a sorry spectacle indeed, but we’ll bet the league will be even sorrier when a player injured on a headshot in the kill zone seeks legal representation and goes to court, just the way Steve Moore has taken Todd Bertuzzi, et al., to court after his neck was broken by a sneak attack in 2004.
The NHL better keeps its head up.
* There are myriad reasons why a team wins the Stanley Cup, but there is no doubt the Flyers won both of their titles (in 1974 and 1975) because they had the best goaltender in the world in Bernie Parent, who won the Conn Smythe Trophy both years.
But rather than learning from history, the Flyers have spent almost four decades attempting to refute it. It is as if a pathology has taken hold among Eddie Snider’s decision-makers in the front office in which Parent’s impact has been deliberately ignored, as if the Philadelphia organization is dedicated to trying to win without the best goaltender money can buy.
It’s choosing John Vanbiesbrouck from the free agent class of 1998 instead of either Curtis Joseph or Mike Richter. It’s Roman Cechmanek. It’s spending to and over the cap, loading up on both luxury items and a solid supporting cast up front and on the blue line, but going with discount items off the shelves in nets.
It’s losing the Cup on a soft goal last time. It’s going “Two and a Half Men” with a pair of rejects and a pretty average rookie this time.
It’s the Flyers’ way.
How’s that worked out for the last 36 years?
larry.brooks@nypost.com