The Sedin & Keith Affair

[Island Nucklehead]

[Duncan] Keith "I respect what they decided was fair and I'll serve my time."

Translation: I understand that I got off easy.

And Don Cherry comes out and blames the victim. So Sedin follows through on a check, catches some jaw, and he's "lookin' for it"? Looking to get elbowed in the face?

This is the biggest rivalry in the league. This is where there is a scrum, a crosscheck, a face-wash after every whistle. This is a war. And you expect anyone, even a star player, to not finish a legal check? On their minute-munching D-man? Who's admiring his clearing pass?? Okay Don, ya old senile bastard.

[Zamboni Driver]

[Duncan] Keith "I respect what they decided was fair and I'll serve my time."

Translation: I understand that I got off easy.

And Don Cherry comes out and blames the victim. .

Keith is from what continent? And Sedin from Europe? No surprise who Cherry blames...

[Island Nucklehead]

And Don Cherry comes out and blames the victim. .

Keith is from what continent? And Sedin from Europe? No surprise who Cherry blames...

Well he also likened Sedin to Crosby... so there goes that.

[Strangelove]

It's not fair to say Cherry "blamed the victim".

Cherry: “Five games seems right. There is absolutely no reason for [the Keith hit on Daniel]. The puck wasn’t around him. There is no excuse for that! That is the cheap-shot of all time!! Now I’m gonna show you... THERE IS NO EXCUSE... but I’m gonna show you now why he did it. Sedin should never be doing this stuff” (shows clip of Daniel’s prior hit with shoulder making some head contact).

Cherry went directly from there to a bit of a pro-fighting rant: “Which would you rather have? Now we’ve got two star players out, Daniel and Keith. If you don’t have the fighting you have that stuff”.

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockeynightinc ... 2214948310

Cherry has been saying all along that by minimizing fighting / introducing instigator, cheap shots would become more common... that the NHL policing things with refs/suspensions would never work.

[Island Nucklehead]

It's not fair to say Cherry "blamed the victim".

Cherry: “...Sedin should never be doing this stuff” (shows clip of Daniel’s prior hit with shoulder making some head contact).

Which is what, finishing your check? You take that hit out of hockey you might as well make it Women's hockey.

Cherry has been saying all along that by minimizing fighting / introducing instigator, cheap shots would become more common... that the NHL policing things with refs/suspensions would never work.

Which is what I don't get. Because the Canucks tried to get at Keith all night. Scrum after scrum after scrum. Keith wouldn't fight. So when you have players like that, that will throw cheap shots and then not man-up, you're still looking at the same greasy game we saw.

I'm all for an eye for an eye. I think Alberts should have taken a run at Kane and concussed him for a month. That's what Don Cherry is advocating. This has nothing to do with the instigator, because there is a line-up of players ten-thousand long that will take a million buck paycheck to take a run at star players and then turtle when it comes to being a man.

The problem is the league. They refuse to realistically protect star players. That's an egregious violation of any rule. A violent act that had nothing to do with hockey and everything to do with a retaliatory revenge hit. This is the Art Ross trophy holder. Do you think that the NFL would accept a vicious helmet-to-helmet, blindside, late hit to Eli Manning, Tom Brady, or Drew Brees? It's got nothing to do with the teams' response. It's got everything to do with player safety. Obviously, 5 games isn't enough. Ron McLean was right ( ) for a change. 20 games. Make THAT the standard, and the game might clean up. At the very least you'd be punished adequately.

BTW, love Elliot Friedman bringing up the Rome suspension. It doesn't matter that it was under a different regime last season. You got 4 SCF games for a legal, but late, check. Now you get 5 regular season games for an illegal, elbow to the jaw of a top-10 player in the league, without any possession of the puck. That is a joke.

[Meds]

It's not fair to say Cherry "blamed the victim".

Cherry: “Five games seems right. There is absolutely no reason for [the Keith hit on Daniel]. The puck wasn’t around him. There is no excuse for that! That is the cheap-shot of all time!! Now I’m gonna show you... THERE IS NO EXCUSE... but I’m gonna show you now why he did it. Sedin should never be doing this stuff” (shows clip of Daniel’s prior hit with shoulder making some head contact).

Cherry went directly from there to a bit of a pro-fighting rant: “Which would you rather have? Now we’ve got two star players out, Daniel and Keith. If you don’t have the fighting you have that stuff”.

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockeynightinc ... 2214948310

Cherry has been saying all along that by minimizing fighting / introducing instigator, cheap shots would become more common... that the NHL policing things with refs/suspensions would never work.

Thanks Doc. I missed it and was pretty surprised to hear that Grapes was blaming the victim and taking Keith's side.

Makes more sense when you have the ENTIRE quote.

[Per]

http://www.thehockeynews.com/articles/45656-Proteau-NHL-must-send-message-through-supplemental-discipline.html

Good article comparing the NHL to the NFL.

Great article, and I agree the standard should be set higher.

Nevertheless, when you look at the suspensions handed out this season, and compare Keith's sentence to those, five games make sense. A longer sentence would be better if you really wanted to get rid of deliberate headshots, but it would have been a drastic change in the way things have been called this year. We'll just have to accept this for what it is, and hope that the surrounding discussion helps set a new standard for next season. I think the 10-20 range would be better than the current 3-8. If players knew they'd sit at least ten games, possibly more, and might lose a quarter of their yearly salary, they might finally start thinking about the health and well-being of their fellow athletes...

Thought this was a good article on yahoo:

http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/news?slug=n ... ion-032312

[mathonwy]

http://www.thehockeynews.com/articles/45656-Proteau-NHL-must-send-message-through-supplemental-discipline.html

Good article comparing the NHL to the NFL.

Great article, and I agree the standard should be set higher.

Nevertheless, when you look at the suspensions handed out this season, and compare Keith's sentence to those, five games make sense. A longer sentence would be better if you really wanted to get rid of deliberate headshots, but it would have been a drastic change in the way things have been called this year. We'll just have to accept this for what it is, and hope that the surrounding discussion helps set a new standard for next season. I think the 10-20 range would be better than the current 3-8. If players knew they'd sit at least ten games, possibly more, and might lose a quarter of their yearly salary, they might finally start thinking about the health and well-being of their fellow athletes...

Thought this was a good article on yahoo:

http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/news?slug=n ... ion-032312

Yeah,

I agree and Shanaban just can't change the rules mid-season. He knows, Gillis knows, everyone knows that the Keith hit was one of the most egregious and most flagrant example of a player violating the no headshot rules. Unfortunately, he is constrained by a system that he himself put in and we all know the NHL doesn't have the balls to throw the book at a star player with no history of suspensions. I also can't help wonder if this is the payback from the unpunished Torres/Seabrook hit.

[Fred]

Another opinion

..

The politics of Duncan Keith’s elbow

.By Greg Wyshynski | Puck Daddy – Fri, Mar 23, 2012 10:38 AM EDT.. .

Duncan Keith of the Chicago Blackhawks is going to be suspended for his elbow to the head of Daniel Sedin of the Vancouver Canucks. On this point, the arguments are few. Even Sam Fels of Second City Hockey, as committed to the Indian as anyone, believes Keith should sit. And I'm pretty sure he slow-roasts Canucks for family meals.

The question is for how long, given the news reported by Nick Kypreos of Sportsnet last night: The NHL has asked Keith to waive his right to an in-person hearing, which means this suspension could climb higher than five-game maximum a phone hearing would have produced. (Renaud Lavoie of RDS says this is pending NHLPA approval.)

What to glean from this: That Sedin's injury, having been flown back to Vancouver "for evaluation" while missing Thursday night's win over the Dallas Stars, is a significant factor. (And that Sedin and Keith are significant players … go down the list and find another suspension in which a Norris winner attacked a Hart finalist.)

But also that the earlier shoulder to the head from Sedin on Keith can be viewed as a catalyst for the Chicago defenseman's subsequent actions — but as a sign of intent, rather than an old-school excuse for settling the score.

As we wrote on Thursday, the NHL's disciplinary process goes much deeper than analysis of a single play. It digs up the roots for aggression, looks at the context, considers the players and other factors.

For Duncan Keith, however, there are a number of dynamics here that don't play in his favor, and lead one to believe he'll be made an example of for his elbow on Sedin.

Once more, with feeling:



For your consideration, as the NHL may already be considering it:

Dan O'Halloran's crew blew the call

A 2-minute elbowing minor on Keith for that hit was, in hindsight, preposterous.

Kerry Fraser on TSN called it a "bare minimum a five-minute major and game misconduct for elbowing," and wants a 5-game suspension at a minimum for Keith. He also calls out the officiating crew, indirectly, for putting the onus on the Dept. of Player Safety to diffuse the situation and make a statement:


The official's ability to accurately differentiate between minor and major infractions on the ice is vital to the success of controlling (and hopefully someday eliminating) dangerous hits and deliberate hits to the head of an opponent. Game enforcement is not only a most visible sign to participants in that specific game but to the hockey community at large as to what is deemed acceptable conduct. In too many situations witnessed this season, the officials have either missed the mark altogether or came up short by at least three minutes plus a game misconduct.

The blown call led to Keith being back on the ice, which led to more malarkey as the Canucks stood up for their fallen star.

The blown call also opened the door for Vancouver Coach Alain Vigneault to add another log to the conspiratorial bonfire that Canucks fans hate to acknowledge their team (and media) stokes. From Brad Ziemer of Postmedia:


"We got a big two-minute power play off that hit from the same referee - remember last year when Daniel got punched six times in the face in the Boston series?" Vigneault said. "I seem to remember it was the same guy."

That guy was O'Halloran, who made no call when Boston forward Brad Marchand used Daniel's head as a punching bag in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup final.

Maybe he and Stephane Auger can compare notes.

The "Predatory" Policy

GettyWhile the Marchand low-bridge on Sami Salo from earlier this season is different than Sedin/Keith in instigation (Salo's hit was clean) and tactics (Marchand's hit was reckless, but it wasn't an elbow to the head), they share something in their DNA: a predatory nature.

Dave Ebner of the Globe & Mail had a good piece on the Keith elbow that notes Brendan Shanahan has often differentiated between "instinctive" and "intentional" hits. From the Globe:


The most common suspension this season has been three games, which was the penalty handed on Wednesday to Phoenix Coyotes captain Shane Doan for an elbow to the head of Jamie Benn of the Dallas Stars on Tuesday. Shanahan stated: "Doan instinctively reaches out, catching Benn in the chin with his elbow." Shanahan added that it was a "reckless" elbow. Benn wasn't injured but Doan is also a repeat offender, with a $2,500 fine just last week for a boarding minor.

When Brad Marchand of the Boston Bruins got five games in January for clipping Vancouver's Sami Salo, who was concussed on the hit, Shanahan highlighted that it was not an "instinctive" hit, noted past bad behaviour, and concluded: "We feel this was a predatory, low hit delivered intentionally by Marchand."

From the fact that Sedin hit Keith to the alleged threat Keith made to Sedin before his elbow, the NHL is going to view this thing as "intentional." And intentional, in the past, has gotten James Wisniewski eight regular-season games — his hit on Cal Clutterbuck was retaliatory for a previous Clutterbuck hit on Fedor Tyutin.

The Line Brawl

Here's where we start to leave the ice, politically.

The fight between the New Jersey Devils and New York Rangers at the start of their game on Monday was … well, awesome. But not for everyone. Not for ESPN's "PTI" guys or for Dan Patrick or for other mainstream media types in the U.S. that rediscover hockey whenever there's something to get preachy about.

There wasn't overwhelming condemnation, but there may have been enough of it to, ahem, "encourage" the NHL to make their next few suspensions — like Shane Doan getting three games in a playoff race — really count.

The NFL's BountyGate

Now, this one is a dash of spitballin' and touch of doom.

The NFL was just praised in every corner of the sports world for throwing the book at the New Orleans Saints after a system of bounties being paid of opponents' injuries was discovered. More than a few NHL fans opined: 'Why can't Roger Goodell handle hockey's supplemental discipline?'

But the reason the NFL acted so swiftly and emphatically has less to do with "cleaning up the game" than "protecting their own asses."

Dave Zirin notes that 800 former players — EIGHT HUNDRED! — are suing the NFL for negligence because of concussions. Litigation was a game-changer: The League tightened rules, strengthened penalties and, now, has suspended a Super Bowl winning coach for a year.

From the moment the ex-players took action, it was expected the NHL would monitor what's gone on, for fear of it's own liability should the NFL take a loss in court.

Now, in a week that's seen the NFL overreact to the bounty situation, the NHL faces its own crossroads — one star player potentially concussing another, with intent to injure. That's rare; even rarer, this is one of those incidents that has the attention of the hockey world, because of the players involved and the intensity of the rivalry and the building criticism that the NHL DoPS has lost its edge. (No suspensions of at least five games since early January.)

The politics aren't in Duncan Keith's favor here. Chicago has seven games remaining. The phrase "remainder of the regular season" has been creeping into our thoughts ...

[Island Nucklehead]

Thanks for the read Fred.

The NHL had an opportunity to send a message and they blew it. 5 games is nothing over an 82 game season. That's piss. That's garbage.

Hockey needn't be a vicious sport. There can be fighting between two willing combatants, there can be body-contact. An elbow like this, and the refusal to own it, should be a massive suspension. Keith SHOULD have gotten 20-25 games. That would send a message. 5 games is fuck all.

That's why this will happen again and why things won't change...

[rats19]

Or not.......

[Cornuck]

Thanks for the read Fred.

The NHL had an opportunity to send a message and they blew it. 5 games is nothing over an 82 game season. That's piss. That's garbage.

Hockey needn't be a vicious sport. There can be fighting between two willing combatants, there can be body-contact. An elbow like this, and the refusal to own it, should be a massive suspension. Keith SHOULD have gotten 20-25 games. That would send a message. 5 games is fuck all.

That's why this will happen again and why things won't change...

I see your point, but there's no way that could happen based on what we've seen so far this season. Yes, it's a joke, but it's a joke that players have to live with. Speaking of jokes, the NHL is a joke by talking out their ass about 'protecting the players from head shots'. They're full of shit, we know it, the players know it - and I'm guessing that Bettman knows it as well.

Like I've said before, the NHL has a great product. We'll keep watching, and hoping. In the meantime, we have every right to bitch about hypocrisy that is rampant in the league.

[Fred]

That's why this will happen again and why things won't change...

No disputing that fact. It's a mess. Remember what ERic Lindros said when he left the NHLPA

"And there's a large political scene in these situations. Colin Campbell (NHL vice-president and director of hockey operations, who dishes out the suspensions) is in a tough position, but there are a lot of back-door things done. Certain teams get taken care of differently than others, no question."

Read more: http://aol.sportingnews.com/nhl/story/2 ... z1qAPoEwaB

[Island Nucklehead]

I see your point, but there's no way that could happen based on what we've seen so far this season. Yes, it's a joke, but it's a joke that players have to live with. Speaking of jokes, the NHL is a joke by talking out their ass about 'protecting the players from head shots'. They're full of shit, we know it, the players know it - and I'm guessing that Bettman knows it as well.

No doubt. Doesn't mean the league shouldn't look at this with the NHLPA and say "look fellas, if you want to be cheap that's fine, you better tack on an extra 30% to the contracts of borderline players because we're going to hammer cheap shots with a 1/3-season suspension".

Idealistic? Maybe. But someone has to step-up, the NFL is facing a class-action lawsuit due to concussions, and the NHL will be next in line if they don't prove they're serious about player safety.

Like I've said before, the NHL has a great product. We'll keep watching, and hoping. In the meantime, we have every right to bitch about hypocrisy that is rampant in the league.

We watch because it's the pinnacle of hockey. It's unfortunate that it's been bastardized and the rules raped and fucked into their current incarnations. If we had nothing to bitch about why would we be on this forum? I like RoyalDude and all his insane ramblings, but I don't want to hold his hand...

[Strangelove]

It's not fair to say Cherry "blamed the victim".

Cherry: “...Sedin should never be doing this stuff” (shows clip of Daniel’s prior hit with shoulder making some head contact).

Which is what, finishing your check? You take that hit out of hockey you might as well make it Women's hockey.

I dunno, I think Cherry is saying fancy-boy goal-scorers like Sedin/Crosby should not try to play on the edge.

I was just clarifying that he did NOT "blame the victim".

Cherry has always hated cheap shots.

Cherry has been saying all along that by minimizing fighting / introducing instigator, cheap shots would become more common... that the NHL policing things with refs/suspensions would never work.

Which is what I don't get. Because the Canucks tried to get at Keith all night. Scrum after scrum after scrum. Keith wouldn't fight. So when you have players like that, that will throw cheap shots and then not man-up, you're still looking at the same greasy game we saw.

You're not looking at the big picture.

Cherry is saying the cheap shot by Keith is far less likely in a world where the players police themselves.

In other words, perhaps Keith doesn't throw that hit in the first place because Kassian/Bieksa doesn't care if Keith wants to fight or not. Kassian/Bieksa rips off Keith's helmet and proceeds to beat the living bejeebers outta him. Next game, same deal.

And so on.

A world where players pay for major cheap shots with a series of humiliating beatings rather than silly little suspensions.

The problem is the league. They refuse to realistically protect star players. That's an egregious violation of any rule. A violent act that had nothing to do with hockey and everything to do with a retaliatory revenge hit. This is the Art Ross trophy holder. Do you think that the NFL would accept a vicious helmet-to-helmet, blindside, late hit to Eli Manning, Tom Brady, or Drew Brees? It's got nothing to do with the teams' response. It's got everything to do with player safety. Obviously, 5 games isn't enough. Ron McLean was right ( ) for a change. 20 games. Make THAT the standard, and the game might clean up. At the very least you'd be punished adequately.

[/quote]

Well like I say, Cherry said from the get-go that it was a mistake for the NHL to try to "protect the star players".

Said that they should have left it the way it was (players protecting their stars).

Would it work if they went for 20, 40, 80 game suspensions??

Who the fuck knows.