Frazer McLaren NHL Suspension Video

Photo courtesy thestar.com

Last night in Toronto, an incident occurred in a game between the Ottawa Senators and the Toronto Maple Leafs. Early in the first period, Frazer McLaren of the Maple Leafs and Dave Dziurzynski of the Senators dropped their gloves and exchanged blows, and before too long, McLaren struck Dziurzynski flush on the cheek, knocking the Senators player out.

This was a violation of Rule 46 - Fighting. McLaren was assessed a major penalty on the play.

Dziurzynski was injured on the play, suffering a serious concussion. McLaren targeted Dziurzynski's head on the play, striking him with a closed fist in a clear attempt to injure his opponent.

McLaren has a history as a repeat offender. Though he has not been suspended or fined during his NHL career, he has been assessed fighting majors on five other occasions this season.

The NHL Department of Player Safety has decided to suspend Frazer McLaren for zero games.

You won't be seeing Brendan Shanahan reading from this script today, or anytime soon. My apologies if you clicked on this link and actually thought this might be for real - and yes, the title of this post is intentionally deceptive.

But ask yourself: why is it that the NHL calls fighting a 'penalty' prohibited by the rules if it comes with special exemptions for supplementary discipline? Imagine you were told that a player on the Leafs had taken a major penalty on a play last night and knocked an opponent out cold. You'd immediately assume a suspension would be forthcoming. Why is it that the league says it's getting serious about 'player safety' when it has harsh penalties for hits that were formerly 'hockey plays' but allows carte blanche for fighting?

Like most fans, I enjoy seeing fights. It's thrilling, and even though I know staged fights (as last night's was) are a bit silly, I still find them entertaining the way I enjoyed watching pro wrestling when I was thirteen. But it's time to grow up. It's amazing that the NHL has made no moves to address this after what happened to Derek Boogaard and Rick Rypien, and what will happen to other players to come. Even if it's not another death, there will be plenty more players with brain damage in the coming years.

I realize, too, that fighting is important to the players, who like having tough guys on their team to discourage players on other teams from making cheap hits. I get that - and I realize eliminating fighting outright would be very hard to do.

But the NHL ought to do something, and the obvious step is to end the staged fights. If one arises naturally after a big hit, that's one thing. But when McLaren and Dziurzynski square off 26 seconds into a game to fight for little more than entertainment, that's a fight no one needs. The NHL should realize that these incidents are embarrassing - McLaren certainly did. After the fight, he didn't raise his arms, didn't salute the crowd, didn't pantomime as if he were putting on the prizefighter's belt. He looked ashamed of what he had done, embarrassed that he had hurt someone just so people could cheer. You can bet that's not what he imagined growing up with dreams of playing in the NHL.

You know, we ain't hockey players. We've been clowns.
We've been goons! We're the freaks in a fuckin' sideshow. We're nothing but a bunch of criminals. We oughta be in jail, that's all there is.... Yeah. Really ashamed of myself. See, Ned was right. Violence is killin' this sport. It's draggin' it through the mud. If things keep up the way they are, hockey players'll be nothing but actors, punks.
Well, I'm not playin' my last game that way.  ...Yeah. It's my last game, and I wanna play it straight. No more "Nail 'em." No more "Fuck with 'em." That's finished. I wanna win that championship tonight, but I wanna win it clean. Old-time hockey, like when I got started, you know? Jeez. Toe Blake, Dit Clapper, Eddie Shore, those guys were the greats.
I don't know what to say. Christ, it's up to you.

Follow Rory Johnston (@rnfjohnston) on twitter: twitter.com/rnfjohnston

On the Anthony Camara hit

There was some discussion on the legality of the Anthony Camara hit on Patrik Luza from last night's Canada-Slovakia game. For convenience, take a look at it here:

 

As you can see, Camara does glide into the zone to cut off the breakout, but he's not going in hard in a straight line; he cuts right, then left, thinking to cut off the pass up the boards. As he sees that the Slovak player isn't moving the puck, he glides in for the hit. Note that he doesn't take extra strides; he basically coasts in, and not at an especially high speed. At contact, he doesn't leave his feet.

The play is not a charge. The 'distance travelled' shouldn't include Camara's path to the boards, where he's cutting off a passing lane. It should start counting only once he starts moving to make a hit. A charge is a straight-line action, not the sum total of an entire path skated.

As the TSN crew pointed out, no arms went up on the play, and the refs seemingly made the call after the fact, perhaps influenced by the resulting injury rather than the play itself. I was disappointed in the call - and apparently the IIHF didn't like it either, as they decided to not hold a discipline hearing (which, for them, is nearly always held when a player gets a game misconduct).

What I do notice, though, is that Camara's shoulder clearly contacts directly to Luza's head. It's hard to fault Camara for seeing a guy with his head down and hitting him; Camara didn't hit him at especially high speed, and he didn't raise an elbow (as JC Lipon did, and was rightly called for, earlier in the game) or leave his feet. Camara's contact to Luza's head could perhaps be excused by calling this a 'full-body hit', as Brendan Shanahan is fond of describing such hits.

That said, I think this is a hit we should eliminate from hockey. Camara didn't actively try to hit the head, but he's the one person able to prevent an injury to Luza. I'd like to see a rule change to put an onus on Camara to avoid head contact if possible; I realize that it's difficult for him to anticipate that Luza will turn his head right into the shoulder at the crucial moment, and further problematic that Luza clearly checks over his shoulder and knows that Camara's in the area. But we should have a more serious discussion about whether we can do more to prevent major injuries from these sorts of hits.

Follow Rory Johnston (@rnfjohnston) on twitter: twitter.com/rnfjohnston