Two minutes for heavy-handedness
Rules are rules, but the OHL’s scale of justice has been weighted toward the ridiculous recently
Let’s play a little game, shall we?
We’ll give you three scenarios. Infractions, we’ll call them just for purposes of authenticity. You pick which one led to a five-game suspension in the Ontario Hockey League.
1. A player drank Pepsi on the bench which is not a product licensed with the league.
2. A player flipped a foam puck that had been tossed onto the ice to someone in the stands.
3. A player stepped on the ice to begin his warmup before the Zamboni gates closed.
All benign, right? All harmless. Docking anyone even one game for any of these — let alone possibly missing part of the kid’s dream tournament — would be the height of overzealous heavy-handedness. So it’s a trick question, right? None are real.
Wrong. Number 2 actually did lead to a suspension. A five-game suspension. Honestly.
A few days ago, Team Canada hopeful Owen Tippett of the Mississauga Steelheads had a foam puck land at his feet during a game. He then flipped it into the crowd, as one might do. Seems a reasonable response. We’re talking about a foam puck, after all. One step up from Nerf. Just slightly heftier than your kitchen sponge.
Yet, apparently where we the people see nothing troubling, the OHL office sees a need for discipline. Recognizing the obvious danger of having an object as hazardous as this squishy disc crash into someone’s face at terminal velocity and the likelihood this could shatter their bones leading to a massive lawsuit that could cripple the league, the folks in charge of punitive actions sprung into action and told Tippett to watch the next five games from the press box. As per league policy.
Clearly the only differences between this incident and the JFK assassination were a second shooter and the Zapruder Film.
It’s worth noting that during the Chucka-Puck promotion at games — the Bulldogs do this regularly — fans whip these same foam pucks onto the ice from all over the arena. Some (gasp!) don’t make it all the way to the ice surface and occasionally (double gasp!) hit people in the front rows. According to the Bulldogs, none of these fans have yet been hospitalized as a result of damages suffered via these flying death devices.
Yes, we checked.
Anyway, if this league-sanctioned activity is safe enough to enjoy at the rink, how does a player lightly lofting a puck into the stands suddenly become a hazard worthy of supplementary discipline?
And if foam pucks are nothing but treacherous projectiles wrapped in a friendly coating, imagine the damage that could be done by stuffed animals during teams’ Teddy Bear Toss games (public service announcement: The Bulldogs’ annual collect-stuff-for-disadvantaged-kids game is Saturday). Those toys can be hefty, they can have hard plastic eyes, they can have sharp plastic or vinyl edges. Just imagine the damage they could do to an unwitting fan. Frankly, it’s terrifying. Amazingly, it gets goofier.
Two weeks ago, Flint goalie Luke Cavallin was assessed a game misconduct and later given five games of his own for flipping a puck into the stands after a goal was scored on him. Five games. Last week, Kitchener’s Riley Damiani got the same sentence for the same infraction.
His was caught on camera. After an empty-net goal was scored on the Rangers, he scoops the puck onto the blade of his stick and flips it straight up into the air. Or almost straight up. Unfortunately for him, it went over the screen behind the net and landed in the stands. There’s clearly no intent to blast a puck out of the rink and absolutely no intent to put a hole in one of the paying customers.
Yet this means all three will have received longer timeouts than Guelph’s Barrett Kirwin and Barrie’s Aidan Brown recently got for slew-footing, which is truly dangerous behaviour. They got just two games each. And the nasty puck flippers got more games on their suspension than Windsor’s Nathan Staios received for a check to the head which is supposed to be the real no-no in hockey these days.
He got only four. For flicking a foam-freakin’-puck.
This makes sense to someone?
Here’s the problem with all this, if that wasn’t blatantly clear already. Once you’ve brought down the hammer for an infraction this innocuous, the precedent now exists. There’s little wiggle room next time. So down the home stretch when playoff spots are on the line you’ll have to be equally muscular or look thoroughly inconsistent. Or worse, in the playoffs.
Do you really want a team to have its season screwed up for something this mild?
Yeah, rules are rules and they’re important and they exist for good reasons.
But surely there’s a place for common sense, too.