Daily Links for Tuesday, November 15

Or it directly relates to the Sabres’ lack of a response. It remains to be seen whether it really is open season on NHL goalies, but clearly it will be open season on Sabres goalies until further notice.

I can’t allow myself to believe this, or I will just stop watching NHL games. Which I would totally do, if I wasn’t so invested already… Every season I see things like this and have this same internal debate. I realize that the corruption is there, but I can’t let myself admit the full extent of it out of fear of losing something important to me (Sabres/NHL). Is that strange?

and they should do it anyway. They need to realize the long-term value in making such a statement, it will have impacts long beyond the 2 lost points and suspensions are forgotten.

Sounds like they’ve found a healthy way to deal with it and move on, which is what professionals do. I just hope they realize the potential ramifications of doing nothing, and are prepared to react differently the next time something shady happens.

The rule has a huge gray area in which the “violence” of the play can be judged subjectively by referees and by Shanahan. It does not say “intent” in the rule, and Shanahan chose to interpret it as such. Big mistake, because intent is way too subjective to employ any fair methods. Now he must resort to asking players if they meant it or not, which is completely besides the point of being responsible for your actions and decisions regardless of intent. Perhaps measuring violence in terms of lack of displayed effort to avoid contact, force of impact, and nature of hit and follow-through would be more objective. If that was the case, Lucic would have a major penalty and possibly a misconduct, and a 1-2 game suspension to send a message to the league would not be out of the question. Shanahan has taken a similar stance on other rules (hits to head, high-sticking), so why not on this rule? Intent should never matter in judgment, it is a cop-out of taking responsibility for negligent decisions.

For your opinion of Shanahan. I think it did deserve a suspension, but I see your point. To me the issue is that it was an illegal play that resulted in serious injury. That is a suspendable offense to me. Regardless, the way Shanahan dealt with this is a joke. I agree that if he wasn’t going to suspend Lucic, he should have just done so and left it alone. He basically set the precedent that if he thinks it’s a borderline suspendable offense, as long as the player tells him – over the phone – that he didn’t intend to do it, or didn’t intend to hurt the player than he’ll be let off with a slap on the wrist, or less. It’s just a joke that all Shanahan needed was Lucic to say “I didn’t mean it” and sound sincere over the phone. It was apparent in his comments to the media that Lucic didn’t care what happened to Miller and that he wasn’t concerned with it at all.