New NHL rules on hits to the head

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great find.

I think there's going to be a lot of players complaining about these rule changes. Particularly the bigger players that normally do those types of hits. It's great the NHL is starting to protect their players but you have to wonder why it's taken so long for the NHL to wake up on this. You don't see other businesses let its' product get destroyed.

A lot of people criticize Todd Bertuzzi for his cheap shot on Steve Moore but no one mentions Steve Moore's hit on Markus Naslund. Hmmmm....

The icing penalty is going to be a touchy one. Contact is going to happen when two players are going hard for the puck and arguments will follow during post game interviews. I'm not a fan of the no-touch icing but I fear that's what the NHL will go to eventually.

This should get some interesting comments out of hockey players.

Does anyone know if these rules will trickle down to NCAA, CIS, Midget, High School or minor hockey?

My $.02

Kara Robinson said...

I hope these rules help eliminate dangerous hits to the head, way too many scary incidences last season, hope this works.

Kara R said...

I know that the High School Hockey program here follows the same rules as the Canadian Junior Hockey association, they absolutely do not follow NHL regulations. and I agree with you Jason, it took way too long for action to be taken on this.

Rene-Pierre said...

From previous hits like those one showed in the video, people got injured and miss half the season and even more. Just by eliminating this rule it might be more interesting for hockey players to get involve in the play.

Anonymous said...

The NHL is now in a sticky situation with the tougher rules. The NHL is moving in the right direction with the rules but now need they have to enforce them.

Case in point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-4aH7nnPjc

Here's the article:

http://tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=337188


If the NHL doesn't do anything, I think the KHL will start to appeal to more NHLers...

My $.02...

Jason

Luke said...

My problem with hit to the head rules is that if a guy's shoulder hits the other players head but that hit would be perfectly legal if the other player was taller how is the hitter at fault? If the guy who has his head down gets hit in the head how is it the hitter's fault? Keep your head up, don't cut across the middle and maybe the amount of concussions you will recieve will go down. Jason mentioned the Bertuzzi incident. What also is never mentioned is that Bertuzzi tried to get Moore to fight and he wouldn't. That is against the unwritten rules in itself. I am not saying what he did was right but had Moore dropped the gloves the whole incident would have been avoided. You do not hit a star player the way he did and then whimp out when another player tries to hold you accountable. By the way, I am an Avalanche fan and still feel this way.