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SENShobo

Stick It To ‘Em

by SENShobo on 03/11/09 at 09:10 AM ET
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Tonight, the Lightning visit Ottawa, and with Senators killer Gary Roberts now retired, it’s as though every trick in the bag has been pulled out to suck away meaning and intensity from this game.

Neil might get to put some back in, and maybe a little something extra as well, but as luck would have it, much of the chatter still revolves around something as simple as the shape of the blade of Jason Spezza’s stick.

Rest assured, it is either illegal, or the rules will be interpreted in such a way as to make it illegal. Yes, even I am taking that side.

From the Ottawa Sun,

“I’m feeling pretty good. It’s coming and that’s a good thing,” Neil said yesterday. “I’m getting closer each day to getting back into the lineup. I haven’t really thought about it. (Trainer) Gerry (Townend) asked me (yesterday) and we’ll see how it is (today) and go from there.

“Hopefully, I can play (against Boston). If it’s not on par (tomorrow), then Saturday (against Pittsburgh) for sure. It’s nice just getting back into practice with the guys and getting the feel for everything. Getting your passing back. That’s half the battle.”
....
“He bring[s] the element of toughness and energy,” said Clouston. “He makes other teams accountable. When he’s on the ice, they have to be aware of who is out there. He’s the type of player that every team likes to have on the ice and maybe not necessarily play against as well.”

There’s even talk that Neil could return as early as tonight. After missing so many games, expect him to be eager to bring his highly-desired physicality right from his first shift. But expect more than that, too.

Neil was not re-signed at the deadline, which tells us and hopefully Neil as well that his on-ice skills are not worth the alleged $2.5 million being asked for. As well, teams were not interested enough in his services to offer up anything but token assets, only further strengthening that point of view, suggesting that he could not get those dollars on the open market, either. With fighting under siege at the GM’s meeting, prized hockey fighter Georges Laraque up in arms, as well as an impending cap shrinkage on the way, no team is going to pay Neil or any other ‘tough’ that kind of money, my apologies to all those I’ve just referred to as ‘toughs.’

What you could well see from Neil in the remaining games is a new man. He effectively has 17 games (minus however many more he must sit out) to show that he is more than a pair of fists. Even for all his hitting, punishing as they are, that kind of money is still not achievable. What you could see is Neil going harder to the net, asking Clouston to let him play Holmstrom on the power play, and maybe a little more determination in practice to put the puck in the net any way possible.

If there’s a trick in the bag that Neil can pull out to show he’s more useful than the lack of trade deadline offers made him seem, watch for it. This could be the most intense month of Neil’s career; a shame it will end with the regular season.

Despite the excitement on the team and from the fans at getting Neil back, Spezza is still stealing the headlines with the confusion surrounding the stick rules that came into play Monday against Toronto, from the Ottawa Citizen,

“I’ve used the same stick (blade) for five years and never had a problem,” he said.
....
The critical sentence in Rule 10.1 is this one: “The blade of the stick shall not be more than three inches in width at any point between the heel and a half-inch in from the mid-point of the tip of the blade, nor less than two inches.”

Clouston said if the measurement of Spezza’s stick began at a half-inch in from the mid-point of the tip of the blade,” the stick was legal and a mistake was made.
....
Captain Daniel Alfredsson said he has never been caught using an illegal stick, though he admitted he used one three seasons ago. It was just over three inches wide and he used it during the regular season without much fear. It was so slightly over the limit that it was difficult to see.

But as soon as the playoffs started, he carefully shaved it down to the three-inch limit.
....
“It’s part of the rule book,” Alfredsson said. “You can question maybe if it’s the right thing to do, but you can’t argue it.

“At some point, you still have to have some measurement, because otherwise you’ll have the Roger Neilsons of the world using goalie sticks for a defenceman at the end of a game.”

Yesterday, I wasn’t sure that Spezza was trying to break his stick to cover it up, but TSN footage clearly shows a few things.

First, as the footage highlights, it does appear that Spezza was trying to damage his blade before the face off. He steps on it before skating over to the bench, most importantly he does so while looking down at it, removing much doubt that it was an accident, the same kind of doubt that was removed by the same downward stare of Chris Pronger as he stepped on Ryan Kesler’s leg during a game last season.

However, is this Spezza trying to hide his stick? I’m not so sure. He shaves all his sticks the same way, and when he goes over to the bench, you see that the stick he gets is identical as far as the eye can see to the stick that he puts back, shown very well when he is holding one of his sticks and handing another one to the referee for measurement. It could well be that the blade was damaged slightly and further damage would give him the chance to change it for a fresh one, or perhaps a little more dodgily the break attempt could have been Spezza trying to give his team a breather as they were holding on to a one goal lead with just over two minutes left, the last stoppage occuring three and a half minutes earlier.

Depending on the interpretation of that rule, the call is completely within questioning. The tough aspect is that you almost know without doubt that Spezza’s stick should be illegal, even if the letter of the rule doesn’t say so. No, it’s not a defenseman carrying a goalie stick as Alfie had suggested, but it does impose other advantages.

The shaved down tip grants more than just weight reduction. It could also give the stick enough of a slope that on some face offs (which Spezza has slowly been improving upon) he could get his stick underneath his opponents, where a higher front tip might have been blocked more easily.

The greater potential advantage, though, does play into Wilson’s assertion that Spezza’s stick is a danger on the ice. While hooking remains illegal and one of the most called infractions, pestering a player with your stick is still a common tool. Try this for a moment: take a beveled edge knife, and give yourself a whack with it on the side of your abdomen, or to the back of your knee; as long as you were clever and picked a beveled but not sharp knife, it shouldn’t be more than a momentary sensation. Now, take that same knife, and repeat, but instead of whacking with the cutting edge, poke with the tip, which could be close to as narrow as Spezza’s tip; suddenly, it’s more than a nuisance, it can be a huge jolt of pain and cause an incredible lack of focus.

Is this Spezza’s intention? No, but I don’t doubt that a tip as narrow as the footage shows, applied to a body as Spezza and every other hockey player does, would cause a great deal more pain than an off-the-shelf rounded end. But there’s the trouble with the rule: an exact shape can’t be prescribed. Just as fighters are expected to get around the new tighter instigator and pre-planned fight rules, players will do whatever they can to get an edge. Sure enough, even the most standard of blades will have a point at the rounded tip where it is going from zero width to the full minimum 2”, thus giving a point somewhere in between where the stick will be in violation. Even sticks with nearly square ends have the rounded corners that can be just as painful to take to the flesh.

Just as the League has been loathe so far to adopt a direct rule against shots to the head, allowing many such harmful hits to be perfectly legal, it is a near impossibility to set in stone the shape of a player’s stick, so personal it is to each player’s game. Whatever the best the rules can do to keep the game fair and safe, they will, but ultimately it will never be enough to stop every last player from seeking that extra edge.

Filed in: NHL Teams, Ottawa Senators | SENShobo | Permalink
 Tags: Chris+Neil, illegal+stick, Jason+Spezza,

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