BOSTON — George Parros is useless in his job as senior vice president of the NHL’s ironically named Department of Player Safety. He acts as a human guardrail against prosecuting predators. That apparently was the job description when he was hired following a 474-game NHL career in which the Princeton product picked up 1,092 penalty minutes and engaged in 158 fights (per HockeyFights) while recording 18 goals and 18 assists.
If the NHL is going to go into contortions to excuse a prior offender such as Austin Watson after he charged Tyler Motte and simultaneously thrust himself upward to deliver a headshot with his elbow and shoulder, then the department should be disbanded.
It is as if the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were working in concert with banks and credit card companies.
This isn’t the first time Watson has committed a similar offense. He was suspended for two games for an elbow and shoulder to Boston defenseman Jack Alcahn just last February. That was his second two-game suspension. Motte is all but certainly concussed.
Yet the Department of Player Safety, with full endorsement of the league and Board of Governors, finds a way to legitimize hits to the head by splitting infinitives between initial conduct and secondary conduct as if the brain knows or cares. Truly, it is beyond me why team owners authorize this type of woefully titled supplementary discipline system that increases the likelihood of injury.
I have also long been mystified why the NHL Players’ Association has been an unnamed co-conspirator. The hope here is that Marty Walsh, the new NHLPA executive director, will find reversing the decision a priority. Why does the union reflexively come to the defense of the perpetrator, exclusively, when it comes to supplemental discipline hearings?
A supermajority of players will never be guilty of a headshot, but far fewer are protected against becoming victims. An overwhelming majority of players will never be suspended, but their union — at times actually on request of the player or the player’s agent, understood — all but automatically argues in favor of lower sentences rather than harsh ones that might act as both deterrents and punishments.
If there is concern about eliminating hitting from the game in this era when even squirts and pee-wees perform magic on the ice, the concern should be more about the lack of intensity that pops up far too often during this grind. The way to promote heightened intensity that would lead to increased physicality is by increasing divisional games to six apiece against each rival.
That is secondary, though. The league and the union have the obligation to transform the Department of Safety into a meaningful bureau of protection. There is inherent and assumed risk in playing the game. But that should not include becoming a victim of league-sanctioned headshots, and by repeat offenders, no less.
I would submit there probably has been worse that has gone unpunished than this Watson incident, but that is no excuse for leniency. We’re not only talking about peoples’ careers and earning power, we are talking about quality-of-life issues that may develop later. No one wants that. No one believes anyone knowingly sanctions that.
It is past time for the NHL and NHLPA to prove it.
The application of collective bargaining agreement matters that apparently are left to the discretion of the commissioner works in mysterious ways, does it not?
The NHL has authorized trades of effectively retired players stowed on long-term injured reserve (LTIR) with career-ending injuries to the tune of more than $23 million to the Coyotes, which will be applied against the cap floor. Jakub Voracek, just acquired from the aggressive Blue Jackets, is the latest, following Shea Weber and Bryan Little. The league once amended its rules to prevent clubs — namely the one on the Island — from using buyout charges to reach the floor. It should do the same on LTIR obligations, then ban the trade of any individual on LTIR. That would end those shenanigans.
On the other hand, the league is punishing the Rangers by making them play short for multiple games because they decided to bring Patrick Kane to the league’s biggest market and push a pile full of chips into the middle of this Eastern Conference meat-grinder instead of bringing up a defenseman to replace the injured Ryan Lindgren.
The commissioner’s decisions seem arbitrary, supported perhaps by the letter of the law, but not by its spirit. Which one of those scenarios seems like circumvention and which seems like an organization doing necessary disruptive contortions in order to win a long-elusive Stanley Cup?
No, the lack of action regarding Watson should not be comparable to the three-game suspension handed down to K’Andre Miller for spitting in Drew Doughty’s face as a routine scrum was breaking up at the Garden last Sunday.
It does highlight priorities, I suppose, I’ll give you that, but that is no defense for the act that Miller framed as an accident. I certainly do not know Miller to be a liar. He certainly should earn the benefit of the doubt.
The whole thing was inexplicable. It was disgusting. A three-game precedent had been established with the suspension of Garnet Hathaway for a spitting incident on Nov. 18, 2019. That is an example of adhering to precedent and justifiably so.
If someone can give a rational explanation for the essential abstention of Flyers’ general manager Chuck Fletcher from deadline-related proceedings, it would be welcome.
Essentially every ne’er do-well loaded up futures by taking advantage of the East’s heavyweight arms race and the West’s seemingly equal balance of power. But not the Flyers, whose move to the second round at the 2020 bubble in Toronto under Alain Vigneault represents the only time the team has won a playoff series since 2012.
Head coach John Tortorella has made clear in his wildly informative press briefings that his roster does not have the talent to outscore teams in what has become a skill-driven league. Fletcher, earlier this week, acknowledged a year too late that a total rebuilding is in order for the 23-28-11 squad that is 13th in the East, 13 points out of a wild-card spot and ranks eighth in lottery odds for Connor Bedard.
Yet the Flyers were either not adroit enough to obtain future assets by moving Kevin Hayes, Ivan Provorov or even pending free agent James van Riemsdyk. That failure puts them further behind.
Karma, long delayed.
This just in. Playing the part of Joe Zanussi is Cooper Zech.