Sports

BETTER WAY FOR NHL TO PUNISH PUNK ACTS

A COUPLE weeks ago on Gary Bettman’s call-in radio show on XM Radio (no, there’s no truth to the rumor that he, like his afternoon competition in New York on WFAN, ordered his screener to refuse to take hockey calls), the commissioner was talking supplementary discipline.

Responding to a caller, Bettman said Philadelphia’s Scott Hartnell had received only a two-game suspension for sending kneeling and defenseless Boston defenseman Andrew Alberts head first into the sideboards dasher because (and this is paraphrasing) Hartnell had tried to hold up and it wasn’t the hit that forced Alberts from the game, but rather the way he hit his face on the dasher.

This is somewhat akin to suggesting that a man leaping to his death from a 24th-floor window didn’t die from the fall but from the way his head on the pavement, but OK.

Perhaps we should mention, too, that the caller identified himself as, “Paul, from Voorhees.”

Well, no, not really on that last part.

But if Bettman, who either should or should not keep his day job depending upon one’s perspective, was displaying restraint regarding Hartnell and the Flyers back then, he lost his patience when Riley Cote subsequently earned a three-game ban that marked the fifth club-incurred suspension of the year.

The commissioner informed Flyers GM Paul Holmgren that the next flagrant foul would be met with severe NHL-imposed fines against the organization.

But as appropriate as Bettman’s threat (or warning) was, it only served as a reminder of the absolute lack of responsibility the NHL pins on its teams and the inadequate action it takes against its clubs in matters of supplementary discipline.

It is clear that suspensions as now issued are neither punitive enough against individual athletes to act as a deterrent nor punitive enough against recidivist teams whose players are guilty of suspendable offenses. It is clear, as well, that the victims’ rights are not well enough protected, and that applies to both the fouled (and often injured) player and to that player’s team.

Slap Shots recommends two changes to the way suspensions are issued, noting that doing so would heap additional pressures on VP Colin Campbell. Perhaps, too, the system should be amended so that a three-judge panel would be responsible for supplementary.

The recommended changes:

First, all suspensions of at least five games would come with an attached full season-series ban against the team fouled in the incident. In other words, Ryan Downie not only would have been suspended for 20 games for his preseason attack on Dean McAmmond, but the winger would have been suspended additionally for all four games against the Senators.

If, hypothetically, the flagrant foul had been committed in the second game of the four-game series, Downie would have been suspended for the final two games of this season and the first two games of next season. If Downie were hypothetically traded out of the conference, the season-series component would carry over to his new team.

Suspensions of four games or fewer would be served exclusively against the fouled player’s team. Hartnell, then, would have been suspended for the next three games against the Bruins.

Second, players under suspension would not only count against a team’s roster, but account for a lineup spot as well. In other words, a team with one suspended player could dress only 17-plus-2, a team with two suspended players, 16-plus-2, etc.

That would remain the case in the season-series component of a suspension. The Flyers, therefore, would have had to play under the max for four games against the Senators.

Are these penalties harsh?

Maybe.

But would they prove a real deterrent?

We think so.

“Gary, it’s Larry from . . .”

*

Wait a second. “Make [Steve Moore] pay the price,” does not seem to be code for “Maim him,” no matter how much one would like to be able to indict head coach Marc Crawford and the Vancouver organization as Todd Bertuzzi‘s co-conspirators in the dastardly March 8, 2004 sneak attack.

If the Islanders retired Bob Nystrom‘s No. 23 largely as a salute to its cast of four-time Cup-winning foot soldiers, then the Devils one day should think long and hard about similarly honoring Sergei Brylin. No. 18 always is a class act, always a Devil, one of two on the roster with Martin Brodeur who can make the three-ring sign.