[2Cdo]

Thanos Thanos:

And, as Don Cherry will correctly point out again soon, most of these injuries wouldn't be as severe as they are if the players weren't wearing that plastic plate armour that replaced the old-style cloth-and-padding elbow and shoulder pads.

Exactly. The equipment I used to wear was to protect me from injury without injuring opponents. The new equipment is designed to inflict injury on opponents.

[Thanos]

Doesn't help much either when the players today are usually all bigger, stronger, and faster than they were even 20 years ago. It still felt like getting hit by a car with the old pads. Put the new plastic pads on players that are already built like army tanks and that's exactly what it feels like, getting run over by a column of tanks. Add in, just like in the NFL, that the current helmets really don't do squat when it comes to preventing a concussion from happening to a player's brain if he gets hit hard enough in the head and it's no surprise that so many of these guys in hockey and football end up with such horrible chronic difficulties when they're in their 40's and 50's.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

2Cdo 2Cdo:

Thanos Thanos:

And, as Don Cherry will correctly point out again soon, most of these injuries wouldn't be as severe as they are if the players weren't wearing that plastic plate armour that replaced the old-style cloth-and-padding elbow and shoulder pads.

Exactly. The equipment I used to wear was to protect me from injury without injuring opponents. The new equipment is designed to inflict injury on opponents.

Not only that but with the older equipment when you made contact with your opponent with, say your shoulder or elbow, YOU felt it too.

[2Cdo]

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

2Cdo 2Cdo:

Thanos Thanos:

And, as Don Cherry will correctly point out again soon, most of these injuries wouldn't be as severe as they are if the players weren't wearing that plastic plate armour that replaced the old-style cloth-and-padding elbow and shoulder pads.

Exactly. The equipment I used to wear was to protect me from injury without injuring opponents. The new equipment is designed to inflict injury on opponents.

Not only that but with the older equipment when you made contact with your opponent with, say your shoulder or elbow, YOU felt it too.

Sometimes even more than the guy you hit!

[OnTheIce]

2Cdo 2Cdo:

Thanos Thanos:

And, as Don Cherry will correctly point out again soon, most of these injuries wouldn't be as severe as they are if the players weren't wearing that plastic plate armour that replaced the old-style cloth-and-padding elbow and shoulder pads.

Exactly. The equipment I used to wear was to protect me from injury without injuring opponents. The new equipment is designed to inflict injury on opponents.

Not exactly. The new equipment is meant to offer more protection yet it often exceeds what's actually needed. Those old pad you guys wear still had plastic inside them, it was just covered with foam and fabric.

Equipment manufacturers aren't making equipment to hurt people, they're making them to be too much like armor.

I'm with you on the older stuff. I still wear older, soft cap shoulder pads and elbow pads when I play.

[ShepherdsDog]

if you feel invincible of course you're going to take more risks

[Lemmy]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

Lemmy refs minor hockey. Nuf said.

No, I don't referee at all any more. But I used to referee minor hockey, Junior B & C, Senior A and Ontario University hockey. However, if your point is that I've never refereed professional hockey, you're right. On the other hand, amateur hockey is hockey by the rules. NHL hockey is about as much like real hockey as WWE is like real wrestling or NBA is real basketball. The NHL is a lot more about entertainment than sport and that is absolutely reflected in the way it's officiated.

OTI OTI:

The suspension was reactioinary.

Absolutely. That's what suspensions are, reactions by the league to actions that occur on the ice.

[OnTheIce]

Lemmy Lemmy:

Absolutely. That's what suspensions are, reactions by the league to actions that occur on the ice.

Not what I meant at all.

IMO, the suspension was due to an uproar by Montreal and the media and had little to do with the play on the ice. I think it was good hockey play with a bad outcome which was unfortunate.

[Lemmy]

Ahh, a conspiracy theory.

[Thanos]

Lemmy Lemmy:

.....No, I don't referee at all any more.....

Enough rotten cabbages being hurled from the crowd and exploding across your face shield will chase away even the toughest of tough guys.

Thanks for doing it for the kids though. Damn yeoman effort in the face of what some of those idiot fans and parents keep doing to refs these days.

[Lemmy]

Never had fruit/vegetables tossed at me, but there was one arena where they had a coin-operated gumball-type machine filled with super balls. We picked a lot of them off the ice.

[Nuggie77]

Just so you're aware, he was suspended for hitting a player in a vulnerable position. It's the new NHL. You can't blind side anymore.

[Nuggie77]

Also, as someone who has played hockey for over 40 years, there have been plastic caps on my shoulder pads since I started playing. This isn't something new.

[Zipperfish]

They have to stop the head injuries, or hockey will simply go down the tubes. I don't think it's bad to hold players accountable for injuries like this is a bad thing, regardless of the legality of the hit. This is not new. I remember Vacnouver's Aaron Rome taking out Boston's Nathan Horton a couple of years ago--same thing, clean hit. Got four games in that case.

As a soccer coach, I compete with hockey. It's no surprise that elite athletes can play many sports at a competitive, perhaps even a professional, level. So the different sports compete, to a certain extent, for these elite athletes. If your kid plays rep hockey, and if he's good, he may well have a couple of concussions under his belt by the time he's finished high school. The kids don't care--they like to be tough. The parents do--they don't want their kids getting permanently damaged.

[Lemmy]

$1:

The mere fact that NHL Rule 48.1 defines an illegal check to the head acknowledges the head is a vulnerable part of the body. Yet the disclaimers in the rule about the victim of a headshot putting himself in a vulnerable position, or circumstances where a hit to the head is unavoidable (thereby “legalizing” contact with the head) are obscene. Such conditions and rationalizations, like those who blame Gryba’s hit on Eller’s teammate who passed him the puck in open ice, are cynical and offensive.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2013/05/07/its_time_for_a_total_ban_on_headshots_in_the_nhl.html