My brother Paul has been a player and/or student of the game of hockey for over 40 years. He’s guest blogging today on the subject of hitting in the NHL.
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Culture Of Hitting Has Changed The Game
By Paul Steigerwald
“The tightrope we walk is that it’s a full contact sport. It’s been a full contact sport since we opened the doors for business”. Toronto Maple Leafs GM, Brian Burke.
That statement from Leafs GM Brian Burke is one we have heard before. Burke thinks that the new proposal from his fellow GM’s to further curb hits to the head will “take hitting out of the game”. This is a common view among many hockey purists on the physical nature of the game. They seem to have lost some perspective.
The hit by Vancouver’s Aaron Rome on Boston’s Nathan Horton in game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals, for which he received a four game suspension, was reminiscent of the infamous weak-side d-man hits to an unsuspecting forward that former defenseman Scott Stevens used to deliver about four times a week when he roamed the ice in the 90′s.
Of course, any forward who was caught off-guard by Stevens with his head down or turned should have had his head examined anyway, because Stevens’ reputation preceded him.
As a member of the trapping NJ Devils in the 90′s, Stevens took advantage of the support of backchecking forwards by stepping up or across to the lower the boom on the puck carrier. His hits were straight up, his shoulder often making contact with an opponent’s chin. And it didn’t matter in those days if the player was blindsided.
The deans of discipline and keepers of the game, including Burke, often refer to maintaining the “fabric” of the game when passing their judgments, as if the kinds of hits we are seeing with regularity today were always such an integral part of the game.
Fact is, the fabric is always evolving as rules and equipment change and players get bigger and stronger.
When I began my career in the NHL in the early 80′s,” hits” were something you got with a bat in another sport. “Checks” were thrown with the intent of separating opponents from the puck.
This relatively new culture of hitting today reminds me of the early days of high school hockey in Pittsburgh, of which I was a pioneer in 1971. Players who had previously played football saw hockey as another opportunity to vent their teenage angst in what turned into a version of “kill the man” on ice. They would run around blowing up players who had developed their hockey skills on the outdoor rinks at South And North Parks.
Meanwhile at the NHL level, mostly helmet- less players were still playing a more linear game, and only a handful of rare birds like Leo Boivin and Denis Owchar were throwing open ice hip checks on puck carriers in the neutral zone. It was considered an art because very few players could do it.
In the late 80′s Mike Keenan’s Philadelphia Flyers were known for their fierce forechecking, and the term “finishing checks” became a regular part of hockey vernacular. Players were commanded to skate through the last man to touch the puck and those who circled away from an opponent without finishing the check were excoriated. There were plenty of gritty grinders but only a few players who were known for their fierce hitting.
Many hockey experts lamented the decrease in body checking during the trapping, clutch and grab era of the late 90′s and early 2000′s but now that the red line is gone, aggressive forechecking is back and high speed collisions are more common than ever.
The hits are also far more dangerous because of the bigger, harder equipment and relaxed rules on obstruction.
Hits are now so important that they have become stats and players whose livelihoods depend on physicality are quick to consult the game summaries each night to make sure they get proper credit. Some 50,000 hits were recorded by NHL statisticians this season, and individual players hits are recorded and ranked in league stat packages. Coaches keep their own such stats as well.
The days of players checking mostly for the purpose of separating opponents from the puck are long gone, and now they often hit with the intent of obliterating the opponent.
It’s really up to the players to establish a new code of conduct, perhaps under the auspices of the NHLPA, to bring this cultural change into perspective and redefine what is best for their own safety. The league has already taken the first step.
Brendan Shanahan was recently named by Commissioner Gary Bettman as the head of a new department that will monitor players safety beginning next season.
It would be interesting to see how things would change if shoulder pads and elbow pads were reduced to the size of the ones he wore in the late eighties and early nineties. If all players would feel less impervious, perhaps they would be more respectful. Until everyone takes stock in how the emphasis on hits has changed the game, it will become more and more dangerous at all levels.
