About that Shea Weber Thing...

The NHL Playoffs have already been overshadowed by the controversy over this hit: the Nashville Preadators' Shea Weber smashed the Detroit Red Wings' Henrik Zetterberg into the boards. Well, maybe not all of Zetterberg, but certainly his head. Go ahead and watch the whole video; it's a pretty vicious little move.

Given the NHL's admirable focus on player safety and trying to take the viciousness out of the game, a lot of us were expecting Weber to be suspended for a few games.Yes, this is the playoffs, when a suspension might swing a series, but hey, if you really want to make the game safer, you've got to make the consequences felt by the whole team, not just single players. That's the only way to make such behavior truly unacceptable to the players themselves.

Those of us who were thinking along these lines were obviously surprised and outraged to learn that Weber is only getting fined, not suspended.

The NHL's rationale- tellingly, articulated in a press release, not one of Shanahan's videos (which are seriously a great way to convey the information on these things)- was that as Zetterberg was not really hurt, so a fine, along with the two-minute minor that Weber (with only second left in the game) was punishment enough.

I think this is an extremely flawed line of thinking. And Shanahan has been considering "actual injury" all year in doling out suspensions, so it's not just about Weber and Zetterberg (indeed, as a Hawks fan, if it were just about this incident, I'd be okay with trying to take a 'Wing's head off). But the fact is, that consideration gives us no guidance going forward, so the deterrent effect of these punishment- or lack thereof- is seriously compromised.

Look at the Weber/Zetterberg hit. There's no real indication of why Zetterberg escaped injury there. There's a dozen factors at play there, and frankly, they all had to fall perfectly in place to protect Zetterberg. However that happened, there's no indication that Weber was aware of it and factoring it in when he acted. Thus, there's no way for future players in Weber's position to understand why his actions were (relatively) acceptable, and what they may do that wouldn't be.

The problem goes the other way, too; if some weird thing develops so that a player is MORE injured on a play than he should have been (to borrow some Don Cherry speak, "if the player don't protect himself!"), there's still no indication of what the hitter did that was worse than other hits; it just ended up with worse consequences. It ends up just looking like luck, and that's a lousy way to run a discipline system.

The sine qua non of the NHL's beefed up player discipline program and it's increased transparency is player safety- the NHL is going to protect players by making it clear exactly what hits endanger them and harshly punishing those hits. But the injury criteria is only hurting that clarity- and it may lead to more hurt players.

Fight Test: How Hockey Media is Covering Violence in the Game

The big viral video in the hockey world this last week is here, where Mike Milbury and Jeremy Roenick get in a very contentious, almost physical, confrontation over Eric Nystrom's (really objectionably) hit on Kris Letang. It's actually a little embarrassing if you think of these guys as professional broadcasters. They talk over each other and interrupt, they clench their fists and puff their chests, and at the end, it descends into personal insults and angry recriminations. Roenick may well never back on set with Milbury.

In a sense, I can understand why the confrontation escalated so quickly. Roenick had great success in- and thus, was personally validated by- a system of hockey that did not go nearly as far in policing hits like this. I'm sure that on some level, he feels like any attempt to criticize that system is an attempt to denigrate his accomplishments. Milbury, meanwhile, while a former tough guy (in a much tougher era of the NHL to begin with) is also a hockey dad, and I'm sure he's thinking of his son as the concussion statistics swell and more players see an early end to their careers. It gets personal because it IS personal for these guys. It gets ugly because this is an ugly subject.

But the thing is, NBC didn't have to air it.

I just don't see what the viewers got out of this segment. It's just two men arguing past each other. Nobody challenges Roenick on his assertion that it was on Letang to protect himself (and it would have been easy, just ask, "Okay, how?"). Nobody refutes Milbury when he says Nystrom went off the puck and straight for the hit (though, of course, it'd be hard to refute him on that). Nobody explains the rules on hits, nobody says what the players could have done, nobody examines how the play could have developed (besides Roenick's ridiculous "What if Letang got the puck and skated all the way down the ice and scored an easy goal?" hypothetical). Milbury tries to provide a little bit of context for the debate on hits and concussions, but it's just one stat screen that they both blow past very quickly. This does nothing to educate, inform, or enlighten viewers about the world of hockey.

And it wasn't meant to. Watch the beginning of the video again. The host says that Roenick is brought out specifically BECAUSE he disagrees with Milbury. And look at the two men- they're tense from the very first second. This was a planned argument. It was a set up for these two men to get ugly. It was "Crossfire" on sports, and between Around the Horn and Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless, we have way too much of that shit already. Just men competing to see how loud they can yell at each other, and eventually, how personally they can insult each other. Fans get nothing from it, and sports look worse for it.

Hockey hits are a very important topic, and the debate is probably more necessary than the one on fighting. But the debate has to be real, not just Roenick trading his reducto ad absurdiam crap for Milbury's defensive peacocking. Anything else is an insult to the fans.