Crosby case highlights high-sticking epidemic
There was a striking amount of hysteria this week surrounding Sidney Crosby and the cross-check that sent him spinning, at least temporarily, out of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
There was shrill outrage on both sides of the border, and wild accusations that the Washington Capitals as an organization, from fan boy owner Ted Leonsis on down, set out to deliberately injure the world’s best player in order to avoid yet another humiliating earlyround exit at the hands of the Pittsburgh Penguins.
To be honest, given that every other Caps effort to beat the Pens over the past decade has failed miserably, there would at least be logic behind such a nefarious plan. That said, it’s absurd to suggest that was the case. Crosby was the victim of a substandard NHL officiating philosophy in these playoffs that allowed Alex Ovechkin to slash him across the back of the head without penalty or suspension, and bad luck that had him losing his balance and crashing into the stick of Washington blue-liner Matt Niskanen.
Now, Niskanen and Crosby have had their differences before. Bad blood? Maybe a little. But they used to be teammates and let’s face it, Crosby has clashed with any number of players across the league who have been forced to come up with legal and/or illegal strategies to foil his offensive forays.
Niskanen is no Matt Cooke. He didn’t intentionally cross-check Crosby in the face. It was an accident, or the unintended consequence of a series of actions beginning with Ovechkin’s slash. Niskanen didn’t set out to concuss Crosby any more than David Steckel did in that 2011 outdoor game that the NHL foolishly permitted to be played in a Pittsburgh rainstorm.
There are, of course, any number of folks who remain completely convinced Steckel did hurt Crosby intentionally, and probably some of the same folks are the ones lining up now to claim the same about Niskanen. They also will insist that Dennis Wideman plotted to injure linesman Don Henderson last season. These are hockey fans so advanced in their understanding of the game that they are capable of reading intent in the minds of the best hockey players in the world.
We can only marvel at their insight.
But back to this week’s hysteria. Despite what you may have read or heard, we are not living through an era of extreme violence in the NHL. This isn’t the 1960s when stickswinging fights between players without helmets were fairly common; or the 1970s when benchclearing brawls happened as a matter of course and Dave Schultz could simply attack Borje Salming; or the 1980s when no-talent thugs roamed the league, and if you didn’t have two or three of them on your bench you were at a disadvantage.
By comparison, NHL hockey today is tame. Which tells you how nasty it once was.
This is 2017 when fighting, as long predicted here and elsewhere, has almost vanished from the sport and one-dimensional goons are extinct. Head shots have been reduced substantially. The skill level of the game is at an all-time high even if the ping-pong nature of hockey without a red line is unattractive to some.
Crosby’s latest injury is not a symptom of a crisis in the NHL, or of an unchecked cycle of hockey violence. To grab a headline or generate a grabber of a sound bite, some will claim this to be the case, but it is not.
Nor is it evidence of a need at the other end of the spectrum to return to a world of enforcers to “police” the game, which is sort of like arguing a return to tube skates and goalies without masks would be a sensible upgrade.
Moreover, if the players wanted to get rid of the instigator penalty they would lobby aggressively for such a rule change at the NHL competition committee level. They have not, and be assured the players have a lot of power these days when it comes to rules. The NHL has threeon-three overtime right now not because the league wanted it, but because the NHL Players’ Association voting bloc on the competition committee demanded it.
But the players don’t lobby for the repeal of the instigator because the majority understand it wouldn’t benefit them or the sport.
The reality is, there’s no easy an- swer for how Crosby’s injury could have been avoided. It’s an incredibly fast full-contact game, and he’s a player who goes where many fear to tread. He gets hurt and sometimes, as Marc Methot would testify to, he dishes out some pain as well.
The problem that does exist, and is being highlighted in these playoffs, is that uncalled stick infractions like Ovechkin’s are increasing and league on-ice officials are — for reasons no one can actually explain — calling the game in a style more reminiscent of the mid-nineties when there was a belief that penalties should never be called in the third period, and that talented players should have to “fight through” obstruction, interference and stickwork.
Did a directive go out from league officials like Colin Campbell and Stephen Walkom to lower the standard? Probably not. Slippage like this just seems to happen in hockey it seems, like mildew in the basement. Nobody notices until suddenly there’s a problem that needs to be fixed.
It feels like the department of player safety has taken a significant step backwards this season in terms of delivering meaningful suspensions for on-ice transgressions. Call it the Chris Pronger effect. It seems the emphasis is on finding ways not to suspend players. By comparison to what Stephane Quintal’s office is doing these days, former player safety boss Brendan Shanahan looks like the Grim Reaper.
That said, today’s NHL really isn’t incredibly violent. What it does have is a problem with uncalled stick infractions that, yes, have led to some injuries, but even more important is allowing lesser talents to slow the more skilled by letting them hack the stars into submission.
The hysteria of this week was more about the fact it was Crosby — back at practice on Friday — who got hurt than about the incident or the actual state of the game. It’s important not to get that confused. Like soccer, football, baseball, basketball, tennis and golf, hockey always has issues and problems that could use fixing.
But claiming the problem is bigger or different than it is won’t help solve the problem. Damien Cox is the co-host of Prime Time Sports on Sportsnet 590 The FAN. He spent nearly 30 years covering a variety of sports for The Star. Follow him @DamoSpin. His column appears Tuesday and Saturday.