Boom Goes the Dynamite!

Sports Sins: NHL

by Eric Berkenpas

Photo cred www.torontosun.com

Every sport has a very exhaustive set of rules by which that particular sport is to be governed. In Baseball, pitchers must pitch from 60' 6" away from home plate. In Football, only 11 players are allowed on the field from each team at any given time. In Soccer, the goalie is the only player who is allowed to touch the ball with his/her hands. In Hockey, you are not allowed to 1) leave your skates to make a check or 2) have the principle point of contact for a check be someone's head. Well boys and girls, Raffi Torres of the San Jose Sharks seems to skim over those rules whenever he reads through the NHL rule book, because once again, he fell victim to the Shanahammer with a big ol' Shanaban that will sit him for the remainder of their current series.

Photo cred www.usatoday.com

Raffi Torres is no stranger to league disciplinarians. He has been knocked for headshots to Jan Hejda, Brent Seabrook, Jordan Eberle and of course Marian Hossa just last year which resulted in a 25 game suspension that carried over to the beginning of this season (and got reduced to 21 games). The NHL has been taking serious strides over the last several years to try to protect players as head injuries have been happening more and more. After the 2004-2005 lockout, rules changed in the league to open up the rink and speed up the game in an attempt to make it more exciting for the fans and more importantly, bring in more fans. The plan worked to bring in more fans, but the cost was a decrease in player safety. The new rules removed a lot of protection that players had. The trapezoid behind the net serves as an area that goalies cannot play the puck outside of, forcing the defense to have to play more pucks behind the goal line, meaning they are more frequently in a vulnerable position against the boards for a check. The two-line pass rule was removed to open up the neutral zone which in turn sped up play through that zone making for bigger open ice hits. These things, among others, are currently being looked into and new ways are likely going to be created for protecting players because new rules alone are clearly not doing the trick...case in point: Raffi Torres.

Let's look at the hit:

          

Doesn't take eagle vision to see that Torres was clearly targeting Stoll's head the entire time. Just a year ago, this is the hit that really earned Torres a bad rep:

          

For the sake of your time and space on this article, I will not post videos of all his other illegal hits, but you get the point. There is no room in the NHL for this type of play. These players all do this for a living and most of them have families and a long life to live after hockey is over. Brain injuries are notorious for causing very long term damage and side effects that can sometimes last forever. There are not many players in the league right now who play with this kind of unharnessed aggression and carelessness but for the ones that are, and Raffi Torres is most definitely one of them, their place in the league needs to be very seriously assessed. If you ask me, I think the guy should be tossed from the league. He has shown over and over and over again that he just doesn't care about the safety of others or simply does not have the self control and restraint to stop himself. Either way, he is a danger to everyone around him and has enough of a history of incidents to, in my mind, warrant his removal. There is not a single group of people or individuals who benefit from injuries and while many are accidental and cannot be helped, this one could have.