Stalberg’s First Hat Trick, Hjalmarsson’s Bad Night, and Holy Instigation Batman!
Do you ever get that weird feeling that when the NHL is trying to sell a new rule that they pick certain teams to sell it on? For instance, earlier in the season the NHL seemed to pick the Flyers’ Chris Pronger to sell the need to make visors mandatory for all players in the NHL. Or how about when the NHL put rule 48.1 in place making checks to the head illegal and the Vancouver Canucks got called for it repeatedly.
Tonight the Blackhawks beat the Columbus Blue Jackets 5 to 2 and Viktor Stalberg scored his first NHL hat trick, but perhaps more memorable is that the Hawks were called for ‘instigating’ twice. So it looks like the Blackhawks will be the team that the NHL proves their instigating penalty on.
And what is instigating exactly? According to the NHL’s ever-changing rule book,
“A player who is deemed to be both the instigator and aggressor of an altercation shall be assessed an instigating minor penalty, a major penalty for fighting, a ten-minute misconduct (instigator) and a game misconduct penalty (aggressor).”
Does nobody think this is too severe? After all, Canucks’ Alex Burrows cheap shotted Bruins’ Shawn Thornton in the Canucks/Bruins game the other night, but nobody called constant bur-on-the-butt Burrows for instigating.
It also looks like the NHL is confusing an “aggressor” with an “instigator” as if they were one and the same. According to the NHL an “aggressor” is,
“…the player who continues to throw punches in an attempt to inflict punishment on his opponent who is in a defenseless position or who is an unwilling combatant.”
Um, yeah, but what do you call an Alex Burrows-type who repeatedly takes cheap shots on guys (hair pulling, biting, scratching, spearing, high-sticking) in order to entice them into fighting? See, because the dictionary defines instigating as “urging, provoking, or inciting some action or course” and in the case of Alex Burrows in that game the other night, it was he who instigated first. To put that in playground rules, Alex Burrows started it first!
But the NHL give themselves an out for bad refereeing:
“Referees are provided very wide latitude in the penalties with which they may impose under this rule. This is done intentionally to enable them to differentiate between the obvious degrees of responsibility of the participants either for starting the fighting or persisting in continuing the fighting. The discretion provided should be exercised realistically.”
Another way to define “wide latitude” is “subjectivity” ensuring that no two games are called exactly alike, or properly. Why subjectivity? Because refs have preferences for certain teams and dislikes for others, and because the NHL rules are so vague as to be interpreted in many different ways. For instance, if the instigating rule were a law it wouldn’t hold water; it would be voided for vagueness. So why should the NHL purposely leave the instigating rule vague so as to ensure confusion and bad calls, i.e. improperly refereed games?
And I guess I can understand why they created the penalty for being the 3rd man to engage in a fight (the old “3rd man in rule”) to guarantee that NHL fights didn’t turn into bench-clearers, but coming to the aid of a teammate after he got checked dirty — like Steve Montador and Jamal Mayers in tonight’s game who were defending Andrew Brunette and Niklas Hjalmarsson respectively — shouldn’t be instigating or a game misconduct. These kinds of rules are ruining the integrity of hockey and need to stop!
My gosh, did you see Niklas Hjalmarsson get pounded on the ice tonight? He was on the business end of a dirty check to the head from Blue Jackets’ Jared Boll and a nasty high-stick to the eye from Tomas Kubalik. Granted the high-stick was an accident, but the dirty hit certainly wasn’t and deserved an answer from Jamal Mayers. So I disagree with the whole “instigating” penalty as it’s defined by the NHL and as it’s being enforced by the refs. I understand the fine line the NHL walks between trying to keep the players safe and over-enforcement, but all these rules are ruining hockey. Seriously, I’m with Don Cherry on this one: If you overly penalize fighting, you will ruin the character of the game and therefore the game itself.
That said, congratulations to Viktor Stalberg on his hat trick and to Dave Bolland on his shorty goal; Tazer (who took a puck to the head off a deflected shot from Duncan Keith in the 1st period) and Jelly go ice your heads; and hey NHL, can we cool it on the instigation penalties for one hot minute???