Is it the right call for Chara?

The right call was made on Chara. If the play had occurred on normal boards it was an interference call at best.

The real issue is the design of the rink. If you really want to fix this you can if you want to get creative. The NHL can mandate these changes for example.

1) Put the glass divider back a foot or more.

2) Put more padding on the turnbuckle or rig it to disengage from the boards altogether at a certain amount of force. Don’t tell me an engineer out there can not do this if it really is an issue.

For me personally I see hockey as the fastest and one of the most dangerous games to play. Part of what makes it so exciting. You will never have all injuries removed from the game unless you get guys out of skates and ban checking.

I don’t want to watch road hockey and I really wish this hadn’t happened in Montreal where the sky is falling mood has to happen because it was a Habs player…

Chara knows that the stanchion is there. The point you made about the severity of the injury is a good one. Pacioretty’s broken neck is certainly more serious than Brad Stuart’s broken jaw. Also, although Kosto was being a bit ruthless with his hit, the injury happened because Stuart was in an awkward position, through no fault of Kosto as the hitter. Chara had control of the whole situation and had plenty of time to let up.

I tend to try and avoid controversial topics such as this since my primary objective on this blog is to enjoy the company of the other members and have a good time in the gamethreads, but I can’t help but get in on this.

Puck Daddy had an article about this today. It’s a really touchy subject, but I tend to think that both sides are overreacting. I don’t mean to belittle the injury or claim that Chara is innocent, but I think that his needs to be looked at from both perspectives. It’s really difficult to view situations like this from a neutral viewpoint (see: all of politics). I think the NHL failed by giving no discipline whatsoever, but bringing a criminal investigation in is simply absurd.

I talked about this some in my last column, but basically, Chara needed to be suspended, intentions or not.

By not suspending him, you are absolving him as well as future players of all responsibility of their hits. Yes, it would like have been just interference otherwise, but the fact is, it wasn’t “otherwise”. Intentionally or not, Max Pacioretty ended up in the stanchion. That is not Pacioretty’s fault. Chara made the play that caused the injury, and he needs to be held accountable. If not? Then in the future every player can claim ignorance for location on the ice.

Players today already have a ton of uncertainty on the ice.

I know an NHL player, nephew of a friend of mine. Not a star player and no one I’ll name but his comment over beers last summer was that half the time out there the whistle goes now and everyone’s head snaps to look at the ref, none of them know half the time who is getting the call.

That is really nuts in my book, given the old days. But the players are already playing blind unsure of what is and isn’t a penalty. While playing the game is so fast most are just defaulting away from any contact at all to be safe. Surely you can see the massive increase in low stick work instead of contact.

I am not totally a Cherry fan, lots of what he says is bunk but sometimes he is on the mark.

Rink modification and also how the Habs are playing politics. They know they have a poorly designed and padded turnbuckle, now they are scrambling to do misdirection on the injury. Sure wasn’t there fault – they don’t want a million dollar lawsuit.

Same with the Air Canada crap, politics, Air Canada being located in Montreal. Get through the first couple minutes of this Cherry rant and on the Chara hit he gets into it a bit. You simply can’t put anymore confusion and doubt in the players mind at this point. It is already very hard for them to play the game confidently.

Just my view…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BIQ49TsJRGY