The perfect hit.
One player lines up another in his sights and uses his entire force to knock out the other player, who often doesn't even see it coming.
Stevens knocking out Lindros.
Quinn crushing Orr.
Campbell demolishing Umberger.
Everyone remembers a perfect hit.
It can bring a crowd to its feet.
It can change the momentum of a game or a series.
It can have devastating effects on an individual.
One hit can end a career - or worse.
Throughout the course of last season I wrote quite a bit about concussions and cheap-shots and the risk to players of a serious life-altering injury. Far too many players have had their careers cut short because of concussions - players like Pat Lafontaine, Mike Richter, Brett Lindros, Jeff Beukeboom, Keith Primeau, Nick Kypreos, Scott Stevens, Adam Deadmarsh, Dave Taylor, Geoff Courtnall and Mike Eaves. And this past season there were far too many players carried off on stretchers.
But it could have been worse - so much worse.
On Sunday, what seemed like a routine play in an NFL game between the Bills and Broncos ended in an absolutely horrible tragedy. Bills’ tight end Kevin Everett suffered what is described by the Associated Press to be a “catastrophic and life-threatening spinal-cord injury” and is “unlikely to walk again”.
This isn’t the first such tragedy in NFL history and unfortunately it won’t be the last - that is the nature of a sport where violent collisions occur on each and every play. But one thing that I noticed when watching all the games this weekend was that a violent sport has become much more vicious than ever before. It used to be that every few games you’d see a hit that would absolutely amaze you and be shown over and over on highlight reels throughout the week. Now it seems like each week there’s a whole reel of hits like that, each hit more violent than the next.
Hockey and football are extremely physical sports and the hits are not only expected but encouraged. But the thing that is troubling is that players have become bigger, stronger and faster than ever before and thus the hits are more dangerous than ever before.
Think about the most feared and/or most physical players that you watched growing up. Chances are, many of these names come to find:
Mark Messier - 6’1, 205
Marty McSorley - 6’1, 190
John Kordic - 6’1, 190
Cam Neely - 6’1, 185
Dave Schultz - 6’1, 185
Joe Kocur - 6’0, 220
Rick Tocchet - 6’0, 214
Gordie Howe - 6’0 , 205
Chris Nilan - 6’0, 205
Rob Ray - 6’0, 203
Scott Stevens - 6’0, 200
John Ferguson - 6’0, 178
Wendel Clark - 5’11, 197
Tiger Williams - 5’11, 190
Vlad Konstantinov - 5’11, 176
Maurice Richard - 5’10, 180
Carl Brewer - 5’10, 180
Bobby Clarke - 5’10, 176
When I broke down the rosters last season I learned that 23% of NHL players were 6’3 or over and 79% were at least 6 feet.
Six-foot-three used to be the size of giants - like Bob Probert, Dave Semenko, Gino Odjick. Now nearly 1/4 of the league is that size or taller. I posted this list a few months back but I think it’s worth another look:
6’9 - Chara
6’7 - Boogaard, Gill
6’6 - Pronger, Sutton, Cairns, Norton, Antropov
6’5 - Coburn, Hatcher, Fischer, Mezei, Belak, Rathje, Cullimore, Mikhnov, Malik, Sundin, Alexeev, McGrattan, Rupp, Rommodore, Kozlov, Winchester, Handzus, Foster, Parker, Chouinard, Babchuk, Wozniewski, Parros, Vasicek, Lindros
6'4 - Allen, Bell, Arnott, Alberts, Lecavalier, Welch, Bouwmeester, McLaren, White, Richardson, Burns, Komisarek, Pyatt, Zubrus, Staal, Staal, Malone, Novotny, Linden, Holik, Penner, Kilger, Whitney, Thornton, Primeau, Jacques, Mara, Ponikarovsky, Green, Tallackson, Vaananen, Gaustad, Brookbank, Lehtonen, Modin, Rissmiller, Lowe, Auld, Harrison, Souray, Shelley, Muir, Nash, Jurcina, Kubina, McKee, Peters, Gratton
6'3 - 79 players
6'2 - 131 players
6'1 - 140 players
6'0 - 119 players
Bigger. Faster. Stronger. More dangerous than ever before.
The league has made some strides in the right direction to protect its players but I believe that they absolutely need to do more, in conjunction with the Players’ Association.
Here are seven areas that I believe need to be examined closely.
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Hitting to the head should be penalized. Two-minutes for a minor infraction and five-and-a-game for anything deemed vicious or intentional. If you can enforce hitting to the head rules in football it shouldn’t be so difficult to figure out something that works on hockey - even with the height difference between players. If you can’t hook, trip or high-stick another player you shouldn’t be able to clock them in the head with your shoulder or forearm.
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Full audit of player equipment. Overhaul of legal shoulder/elbow pads. This should have happened already. It really is a no-brainer.
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No-touch icing. Of all the hockey games I’ve watched in my life I can’t say I recall that one amazing race for a puck that justifies the risk that players face going back to touch the puck for icing. We’ve seen some terrible injuries in past years but there’s no doubt that there’s a huge risk of a serious spinal injury the longer these races are allowed to play out.
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Severe Penalties for cheap-shots and hits from behind. It’s time to get serious about supplemental discipline. The “that’s hockey” attitude is out-dated and is a disservice to the vast majority of the players who play by the rules.
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Analysis of NHL arenas (boards, seamless glass, ice conditions, etc). If there’s anything that can be done to make the rink safer, let’s do it.
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Fighting. The league and the NHLPA needs to sit down and have a fair and unbiased discussion on the pros and cons of fighting. If it is determined that fighting has a place in the game long-term perhaps there are ways to make fighting safer for the players. If it’s determined that there’s just too much risk involved now that we have enforcers like Derek Boogaard (6'7) then they need to figure out what that means. Stricter penalties for fighting won’t take it out of the game completely - players will come to their teammates’ defence when needed no matter the consequence - but it may eliminate those needless fights with the 12th forward on each team trying to earn their 4 minutes of ice-time a night. That's how it is in the playoffs and International tournaments and you never hear people complaining about the lack of fighting.
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Mandatory mouth guards and chin straps done up properly. The training staff of each team needs to be sure that all precautions are taken to protect the organization’s assets - even if the players find it uncomfortable at first.
I’m very surprised that the horrendous injury suffered by Everett this weekend hasn’t become a bigger story. Maybe it’s because he isn’t a well-known player or maybe it is because this type of injury has happened before in the NFL. It’s sad that it is getting nowhere near the coverage that somebody like Terrell Owens gets for doing sit-ups on his driveway - but let’s hope that the right people take notice.
When there is a similar incident in the National Hockey League it will most definitely be front-page news and it will bring all the people who think hockey is too violent out of the woodwork to criticize our great game.
I don’t expect changes to occur overnight but let’s at least open up the dialogue between the league and the Players’ Association.
Hockey is a physical sport. That will never change.
But if there are preventative measures that could be put into place to make the game safer for its players then they have to be considered immediately - not after hockey suffers an on-ice tragedy.
Danny -
[email protected] 
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