Neither the Richards on Booth nor the Cooke on Savard hits were elbowing.

Posted by xploddan from Sweden on 03/15/10 at 04:13 AM ET

Since he played that card, though, he’s put himself in a strange spot.  He’s going to have to play it again, even if it means suspending a superstar.

What in the world makes you think that?  This Campbell and the NHL you’re talking about.  Despite his claims, consistency or rational thought for that matter have never factored into Campbell’s decisions before.  I’d shocked if Ovechkin got as much as a game.

Posted by Django on 03/15/10 at 04:32 AM ET

Clearly it was a penalty, but despite Ovechkin’s history of “reckless” play I dont see how in this situation it was in any way malicious or predatory. It was at worst a little bit chippy.  I thought the misconduct was given only because of who he was, and not because of the play. The kneeing deserved a suspension, this doesnt come close.

Posted by Igor from New York on 03/15/10 at 05:38 AM ET

Ovechkin put on a hit/push from the side, and Campbell followed suit by slamming into the boards.

Was it a penalty?  Yes…could it of been 4, or even 5?  Yes…Game misconduct or suspension?  No Way…

Ovie can sit for one or two and it means nothing to the Caps…

Posted by SA-Town on 03/15/10 at 06:03 AM ET

it was REALLY just misfortunate, and a litlle bit stupid, but not intended,you see Ovečkin was upset imediatly after he saw Campbell
and Lapierre’s hit was cheap the other day,way worse and cowardly that this one

p.s. I dont really care for The Caps,or Pens,or whatever hate war is going on

Posted by edillac from bitches please,this isnt funny on 03/15/10 at 07:23 AM ET

I concur with our Slovenian friend above me.

Posted by Andy from FightNight on 03/15/10 at 08:35 AM ET

I still don’t understand how anyone can look at that and not react badly, how anyone can say 5 and a Game isn’t well deserved. It was the same “gutless” “lack of respect” that people decried from Max Lapierre. There was no attempt at a hockey play, just an attempt to hit and hurt someone. (not saying he tried to put him out for the season, but Ovechkin doesn’t charge and chase people because he thinks it feels good for them).

And I’m tired of “he felt bad right after” everytime he injures someone he feels bad on the ice, then defends himself after the game and refuses to be more careful. If he gave two-shots, he would stop boarding and kneeing people. He doesn’t have to revamp his game, just learn to think a second longer before delivering a hit where he sees the numbers.

The suspension is necessary to send him that message, he needs to be shown that the league won’t accept that from him (or anyone else). It took 9 dangerous injurious plays to get him a suspension, if he had been punished after 4, would the next five have happened? He gets the leeway and he knows it, so there’s no reason to change his play, there’s no reason to start respecting other players, there’s no reason to be more careful not to hurt anyone.

Posted by Thomas from Canada on 03/15/10 at 10:07 AM ET

I wonder if the ethically weak individuals that currently run the NHL want to grow the league,or kill it.

This subjective political dance they do every time there is a serious infraction causes a problem that they may not consider.

I have 4 children, and I am a life long hockey fan. While many current fans I am sure don’t care about these things much, or like the violent dangerous play, I do care, and many prospective fans do too.

People becoming interested in hockey, especially after the Olympics, are not going to see the dirty play and lack of consequence in the same way as a hard core fan, and may wonder why blatant cheating and foul play are tolerated in hockey, and far less so in the other major sports. It is hard enough to explain the fighting let alone dangerous play.

As for me and my 4 little ones, I am not sure if I want them to watch hockey. My wife and I are trying to teach them fair play, how to have fun and compete at games without cheating or hurting other people.

Right now the NHL embodies the opposite of that - special treatment for certain players, cheating that goes unpunished, goons running skill players with little consequence.

An ugly old boys club where former players and commentators bleat on like hockey is all about them, not wanting evenly called rules and/or punishment for injuring other players illegally.

Guess what? Pro hockey is about the fans, we pay the bills. It’s not for Cherry or Milbury or whichever throwback.

And right now the NHL is not a family friendly place to be. Makes you wonder about the future of the league.

Posted by hugo agogo from canada on 03/15/10 at 11:05 AM ET

And right now the NHL is not a family friendly place to be. Makes you wonder about the future of the league.

Good thing the NFL is so wholesome with it’s paralyzations and culture of violence off the field, not to mention its winking promotion of fan DUIs. Between that and MLB’s brightest role-models injecting horse testosterone every five minutes while the league looks away,  at least there are more family-friendly alternatives. Or the NBA, where guys point firearms in the locker room. Or Golf, where the best golfer has a harem and doesn’t tip waitresses and the second-best golfer has drug problems.

The NHL is out of control on hits like this, but singling it out in a “for the children” plea? With the state of other sports? Give me a break.

Posted by steve on 03/15/10 at 11:29 AM ET

Ovechkin put on a hit/push from the side, and Campbell followed suit by slamming into the boards.  [ /quote]

Really?

http://www.sbnation.com/2010/3/14/1372541/alex-ovechkin-brian-campbell-hit-suspension-penalty

Go look at that still frame and tell me that is a push from “the side”

That is jersey # to jersey #.  Straight hit from behind into boards.

Yes…Game misconduct or suspension?  No Way…

Umm review that still, go re-watch the video, if you truly do not think it was a dirty / illegal hit, your fanboy is showing…

Posted by malk on 03/15/10 at 12:17 PM ET

I didn’t say that the other sports were free of problems. Athletes have always been loose cannons.

I am not referring to behind the scenes lifestyle issues, but issues during play, what people see during a game. Injuries are a part of contact sport and high speed sports like skiing. Football can have devastating injuries for sure.

I have trouble believing there would be no consequences to continued reckless, injury causing play, from the same players, in other major sports. Boogard, no stats other than penalty minutes, no skill, and fighting is just not quite enough for him. He tries to hurt other players. Maybe you have a current example of a player like that from another league that repeatedly receives little punishment for his excessive behavior during play?

“For the children plea”? I was talking about my kids, and wondering what a new hockey fan might think if a life long hockey fan, who thinks fighting needs to be a part of the game right now, isn’t sure if his own children should watch it.

Not because some athletes are lousy people, but because the “condoned by default” on ice conduct remains a questionable thing for children to see, for parents who don’t want their kids to behave like say, Ovechkin, Cooke or Boogard and have to sort them out later.

Growth is important for the NHL to thrive given the huge salaries being paid and relatively low TV revenue. If I get turned off and I like the physical part of the game, the game right now must be turning off many new fans.

Not everyone cares, but there is a reason for the role model stereotype.

Posted by hugo agogo on 03/15/10 at 12:55 PM ET

Your photo isn’t 100% evidence. If the hit was squarely on his back you would not see much of Campbell’s jersey, from another angle you see one hand on campbell’s shoulder and one hand on his back. Was it still from behind, yea a bit but not the way some of running around with their heads on fire about.

Watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkQKBGAQExQ

Exact same hit that Ovechkin did. It is a dangerous play, but both are accidents. Hockey is played very fast, players make decisions in moments, you don’t always get to say “oh hes falling I shouldn’t hit him.” Its disappointing that Campbell is hurt but its no reason to go head hunting on Ovechkin. That’s where Campbell should play is “consistency card” (though frankly we all know Campbell is an absolute joke of a disciplinarian).

It will be the nhl’s decision to make about should they only punish those which injure, or those with the intent to injure. I leave you with a true intent to injure replay, done the same day of the Ovechkin hit, but recieved no penalty and isn’t getting a lot of media attention… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E95gD79dWjA

If you don’t see a difference between these two hits, well your just biased.

Posted by breaklance on 03/15/10 at 12:57 PM ET

To me a leg tackle is far less dangerous than pushing someone into a wall at high speed.

Yes Crosby’s leg got caught under Downie and that hurt, but he wasn’t injured. There are numerous serious injuries from hits into the boards in the juniors and NHL, and from elbows to the head. Can’t think of any from being pulled down from the side, no board contact.

Ovechkin purposefully pushed Cambell into the boards and seriously injured him. Thats all that matters here. And he has done this before. He is a great player, but a violent player isn’t good for the game no matter how good.

Downie is a danger to other players and really should be close to being sent out of the league.

Posted by hugo agogo on 03/15/10 at 01:11 PM ET

I have trouble believing there would be no consequences to continued reckless, injury causing play, from the same players, in other major sports.

The average life expectancy for an NFL player is 55. Linemen, 52. Football itself, when following the rules to the letter, creates reckless, deadly permanent damage to its players that reduce their life by 20-25 years. Since that damage occurs even if rules are not broken, that fits your criteria.

Linemen also fit your criteria of players like Boogarde, who can’t run 1k or hit a baseball, are there only because they are big, mean guys and whose only job is to punish the guy in front of him. It’s their job, so I’m pretty sure that’s “condoned by default.”

Do I want Boogarde out there? Absolutely not. Do I want Ovechkin, Downie or Cooke to run around cheapshotting people. No, I want them suspended as long and frequently as it takes until they either get the message or are too old to play. Is the league delinquent on this? Yes. Would a thug like Boogarde even be needed in this particular sport if the league did their due diligence correcting guys like cooke? Hope not, but I’m not sure.

But spare me the “how can I let my kids watch hockey with role models like this” argument when every other sport has worse black eyes and football, when played correctly, is a contest OF the very infractions you’re singling out in hockey.

If you want your kids to watch nothing but the most pristine, good-spirited sporting events, contested fairly by honorable players, and hockey isn’t close enough to that, despite it’s favorability when compared to each of the big four, I guess your safest bet would be tennis, since Rafa Nadal or Roger Federer are no less amazing then Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin and you’ll never see them assault an opponent.

Whoops, spoke too soon. Some tennis matches are rigged and Serena Williams was just fined for threatening violence against a line judge during a globally televised match.

Posted by steve on 03/15/10 at 01:56 PM ET

It was a borderline push to the side/back.  If you had bothered to watch the play or the 100 replays they showed you would see that Campbell caught his skate and took a nasty fall.  Could Ovechkin have pulled up and not touched him? Possibly, but at what point to we end up taking out the speed, power and aggresiveness of the game.  Is there a quote from Campbell anywhere? I doubt he thinks its a dirty hit either. 

What does the author hope to achieve by throwing out this ridiculous statement “Ovechkin played in EXACTLY 41 games between the Kaleta incident and the Campbell incident, so he just barely made sure that the automatic suspension didn’t come into play.  It seems crazily coincidental to me. “

What a joke, does he really think Ovechkin is marking on the calender the next time he is going to do this?  YOUR A MORON MR. LEE.

Posted by John from chicago on 03/15/10 at 02:35 PM ET

Steve, I don’t think we are far apart in opinion about this, other than you seem to have taken offense to my having mentioned my kids.

I am not talking about contact sport as being evil. I am saying I don’t like unpunished cheating, which we both agree is a problem for the NHL.

Football players kill themselves, yes, within the bounds of the rules of the sport. Take the sport or leave it. I don’t know of any football players that continually and deliberately injure players outside of the rules without much consequence. 

Head shots and various other types of dangerous play are not allowed under the rules of hockey. The players are not supposed to, other than by accident, get seriously hurt.

It’s not about contact sport, it’s about the spirit of what is going on and the league’s response, or lack thereof,  to it.

Posted by hugo agogo on 03/15/10 at 03:11 PM ET

Steve, I don’t think we are far apart in opinion about this, other than you seem to have taken offense to my having mentioned my kids.

You’re probably right that I overreacted.

My primary objection to your argument is that as bad as the actions of guys like Cooke or Downie or Richards have been of late, hockey’s still healthier and more honorable than any of the other major sports and doesn’t deserve to be singled out as something someone would be ashamed to show their kids, unless it were in the context of all major sports, each of which are more guilty of marginality than hockey, in one sense or another.

That something like blindside hits are viewed as needing to be removed from hockey, but are essentially the point of football underscores the extent to which hockey’s ahead of the game.

I still believe this is true even after the kind of crap we’ve seen this year and Campbell’s subsequent failure to handle it appropriately.

Posted by steve on 03/15/10 at 03:38 PM ET

Football is rough, but the players have much heavier equipment, and don’t forget Steve they are running, not skating which increases velocity a lot, there are no rigid walls or glass on a football field, and they don’t carry 5 foot long sticks. A football doesn’t travel at 160 km either.

My brother in law (kineseologist) researched the level of injuries before he would let my nephew get into contact sport, and it turns out football has a lower serious injury rate than hockey and I believe baseball ( ball velocity ) for amateurs.

Professionally, my favourite football team has nowhere near the man games lost to injury as my fav hockey team. I see this as part of what I am saying - you don’t see football players ignoring the rules and repeatedly injuring opponents with illegal hits. it wouldn’t be allowed.

You rarely hear football players referring to another player in that way, like hockey players often do, referring to someone known league wide for dirty, disrespectful and dangerous hits and play.

I definitely agree that hockey players conduct themselves, for the most part, with far more class and honour than in many other sports outside of the rink. Maybe that’s why this issue bothers me the way it does, I expect more from the NHL than this, It truly detracts from a great sport, and makes no sense.

If only the people running the league would demonstrate the same class as most players. Weed out the players without honour, and protect the majority of players who have honour, and the image of the game, so that I wouldn’t even be wondering about this in the first place.

Posted by hugo agogo on 03/15/10 at 05:36 PM ET

Hugo, you can’t compare man-games lost for a football team to man-games lost for a hockey team.  First, there’s the number of games played.  Then there’s the frequency of games played and the amount of recovery times between games.
However…
I found some data on man-games lost in the NFL last season, and it says that the league average was 53.9 AGL .  AGL is a little complicated because it counts a player who “plays hurt” or a player who is listed as “questionable” on the injury report as a fraction of a man-game lost.  If that number of 53.9 AGL is converted into a per-game number, then compounded to reflect an 82 game season, it would be 276.24 man-games lost.  The Buffalo Bills had an AGL of 97.7, which would convert to a shocking 500 man-games lost in the course of an 82-game season.
According to this guy’s numbers on NHL man-games lost to injury this season, it looks like the average NHL team will lose fewer man-games to injury (after leveling the games played) than their NFL counterparts.  I don’t have anything on the CFL, and I’m sure that I would be even more foolish if I assumed anything about the rate of injuries there. 

What does it all mean?  I don’t know.

Posted by David Lee from Greensboro, NC on 03/15/10 at 07:17 PM ET

Just reading this this morning.

Team studying juvenile head trauma

Hockey impact measured at 19gs for kids, 21gs for kids playing football. Both are concerning and the lower number for hockey is probably not lower enough to be any safer.

Fewer pro football games are played and players are more likely to play through concussions would be my explanation for fewer man-games lost, though the fact that there are immovable walls to be crushed into in hockey is certainly a valid argument for why it could be more dangerous. But a blindside hit like Cooke’s would be utterly uncontroversial in professional football, as long as he didn’t head butt the other guy.

And I still say that more hockey players are seen as flagrant rule violators partially because things that are illegal in hockey are totally normal in football. In addition, taking something like the head-slap or unnecessary roughness as the equivalent to boarding or whatever the “Cooke rule” will be called next year, any violator is subject to an x yard penalty, after which, the infraction is forgotten about. Supplemental discipline isn’t even looked at, as it is in the NHL. Even when the NHL keeps getting it wrong, there’s still a greater level of awareness and that’s noteworthy.

Posted by steve on 03/15/10 at 07:24 PM ET

Steve, are you kidding?  You’ve never seen the NFL hand out cash penalties against players who stomp on other players or head butt or hit the quarterback in the head?  Or “bribe” an official?  There were dozens of fines handed out last season alone, and they’re never the nominal $200 fine that the NHL gives out.  They’re always in the thousands of dollars, usually in the tens of thousands, up to $250k last season when the Titans owner used “obscene finger gestures”

True, it’s exceptionally rare for an NFL player to be suspended for an on-field act, but they do hand out some really big fines, and this does constitute supplemental discipline.

Posted by David Lee from Greensboro, NC on 03/15/10 at 08:37 PM ET

Forgot about cash penalties (usually for saying something dumb). But those fees are usually less than whatever the corresponding NHL player has confiscated for being suspended from games. Ovechkin, for instance, has already forfeit more than that $250,000 penalty just this season AND has had to miss three games. I still think that puts the NHL far less in the wrong on this issue.

Posted by steve on 03/15/10 at 09:10 PM ET

As a Caps season ticket holder I will have to admit bias up front.  From what I see the beginning of the hit is in the back, Ovie rides him towards the boards and then pushes him, while Campbell toe picks a bit and falls into the boards. The entirety of the play constitutes boarding and should have been a double minor because of the push. A game misconduct was incomprehensible to me and the two game suspension is unbelievable. There was no reason Ovie wouldn’t have believed Campbell would catch himself before he hit the boards as most players that far from the boards usually do. The injury has nothing to do with it UNLESS there is an intent to injure, which there wasn’t. The push was overly aggressive, but the play was designed to take the defenseman out of the immediate play behind his net, thus minimizing defenders in front of the net ,the definition of forechecking.

  As for the comparisons between hockey and football or any sport I don’t get it. Hockey has always had a tradition of allowing two players face off and whack the hell out of each other, with the specific intent to injure, followed by a five minute penalty and no suspension.  It’s just occurring to some people that hockey may be violent? Football has long had a tradition of making its game safer and more family friendly. Baseball as well. Hockey is only just beginning to try and make these changes. The VAST majority of hockey plays are clean skillful examples of athletics and sportsmanship. Is there any other team sport that concludes any games with handshakes, much less the hotly contested playoff series?

Posted by Dave Vaughan from Leonardtown, Maryland on 03/15/10 at 09:35 PM ET

Dave, you and others have mentioned that you thought a double minor would have been more appropriate instead of a boarding major.  Since there’s no such thing as a boarding double minor, what are you suggesting?  Boarding and…..?  By definition, there has to be a punch for roughing to be the call.  There clearly wasn’t a punch, so it couldn’t be roughing   I can’t see a way to assess a double minor here.

Posted by David Lee from Greensboro, NC on 03/15/10 at 10:55 PM ET