donlever wrote: ↑Sun May 24, 2026 1:20 pm
Here's a cheap shot artist right up RG's alley....
Hmmm... no.
Assuming that you're being serious, I haven't made my position clear.
I want to tilt the incentive structure for cheap shots so that they are minimized in Canucks' (Van and Abby) games -- on both sides.
The implicit bargain equilibrium should be:
- opponents get, barring a strange run of luck, two points -- providing that they keep everything clean -- and no more injury risk than they face in any other league game
- the Canucks get more injury free days during which to develop their young talent -- and don't really want the points, anyway.
But I think that to make that work, violations of the agreement also need to be disincentivized on a team and individual basis.
If there is, say, a coach who thinks that letting up on an very-edge-of-the-rules aggressive style, even for a game, risks damaging his team identity, or a player who think the only way they can stick in / move up to the bigs is to be the kind of player who keeps opponents distracted from the game by considerations for their own safety, then those kind of behaviours have to met with the realistic prospect of (depending on the fighting skill set in which our goons excel) season-to-career limiting concussion, protracted elbow rehabilitation, broken ribs, or facial reconstruction surgery --to say nothing of the risks to the opposing team's star players. All the rational actors thinking about their careers should conclude that it's just not a sensible risk to take. The Canucks, meanwhile, don't care about penalties, because (to re-emphasize:
at the management level) they aren't that concerned with winning individual hockey games, anyway.
But I also think to make that work, the Canucks should not be starting shit, either. Aggressive physical play, hard checks, sure, but no cheap shots, no head-hunting, disciplined stick work, etc. Otherwise, the other team can't risk the rest of the league thinking that they can get pushed around, and they have to retaliate, or escalate, and the injury risk actually goes up.
And if all of the Canucks -- or at least, all of the Canucks who would ever hit anybody -- get plausibly good at fighting, then we might also be able to lose that (relatively) new phenomenon (a U.S. import ?) wherein if a player delivers a significant, but completely clean hit, then he's expected to answer the bell for it.
Of all of the things I don't understand about professional hockey, I don't understand the culture and the unwritten rules the most, so I'm prepared to hear why this just won't work in practice, but it makes game-theory sense to me.
" 
