WHY DO THEY HIT?

This week the leagues GMs are meeting in Florida to discuss numerous sundry items that involve the NHL. At the top of the list, and sure to command a large chunk of the time, are hits.

Hockey is a "contact" sport just like football, and, to a lesser degree, dating, but we'll save that discussion for a future entry, er, blog.

Anyway, at some point over the past two decades "contact" morphed into "launch the human body at a guy for the sole purpose of inflicting pain and hopefully causing some form of physical, or mental, blunt force trauma".

Why?

Why is that allowed?

In football the contact at the line of scrimmage originates from a static position and the purpose of contact on the ball carrier after that is to tackle him, is it not? Or is it to debilitate him so that he never sees his 50th birthday?

Hockey has a perimeter fence and blistering speed on blades. Great for contained excitement or the more malicious modern approach; carnage.

It used to be that the biggest, most jarring hits were delivered by defensemen on forwards, but with the "airbag" caveat that the defenseman was either backing up or moving forward at a very low rate of speed. Again, as in football, the goal is to stop offensive progress and/or separate the player from the puck or ball. But nowadays the hitters are disproportionately forwards, and many have one focus; ignore the puck, kill the man.

Pierre Lebrun presented a staggering statistic that was extraordinarily telling during Saturday's HNIC telecast. He said that hits recorded this season are up 40% from the pre-lockout, pre-"open up the game for the skill players" 2003-04 season. And last season they set a record for total number of hits.

The game is faster, in a lot of ways better, but no question more dangerous.

Essentially what they've done is take the leash and muzzle off the pit bulls.

If you take a look at every roster you'll find 2 or 3 guys who play between 2 and 10 minutes per game. When these individuals hit the ice they are expected to provide "energy" which translates into "run the crap out of anyone in the other teams colors for 45 seconds, then get off". When did that grand coaching philosophy arrive? And why does it thrive?

And add to that the fact every team also has at least one player who can contribute with the puck on his stick but is celebrated for his physicality. For the Stars it's Steve Ott. For the other teams it's guys named Brown and Clutterbuck and Torres, etc.

I just wonder what percentage of that 40% increase comes from this bottom 13% of the roster?

And if that small proportion makes up a large chunk, then what impact on injury totals would trimming rosters down to 3 lines and an extra forward have on things?

Take for instance the Minnesota Wild. Subtract Staubitz, Peters and Nystrom from their roster and one guy (Clutterbuck) would account for virtually all of their forward hits.

Look at the Stars top three lines: Richards, Eriksson and Wandell...Morrow (hits, but to get puck most of the time) Ribeiro and Langenbrunner (hits to get puck)...Ott (he's a little diabolical) Benn (hits to get position and the puck) and Vincour.

But it would be erroneous to say that it's just a personnel issue.

Unabated, unbridled, unfettered physicality is a product of two things: The rule enforcement changes born out of the lockout think-tanks, and, the unwillingness of the league and it's on-ice officials to call overzealous contact (charging, boarding, etc) and hammer those that go way overboard with some serious supplementary discipline. (By serious I mean quarter and half seasons, not 4-10 games)

Up next, I make the case for a move to full time 4 on 4 hockey as a solution to what ails the game.