I’m just surprised Don Adam’s not involved. When that guy is on the ice, someone is going to get injured and the player than injures him will get away with it.

But yeah… this kind of stuff is to be expected from a WCHA that has two turkeys in high places.

As for diving, I say GO FOR IT! It’s not a penalty. I can only remember diving called against a team once (where it wasn’t offsetting): That was way way back when Ferris State was playing UND in a tourney game. FSU ended up winning, but during the game, FSU was called for diving. OH! Forgot. Those were CCHA or some other non-WCHA officials.

In any case, if the officials aren’t going to call penalties when they are obviously penalties, then dive. The officials need help. Everyone knows that. Why else would the NCAA need crackdowns? So, if they aren’t going to call embellishment, then go for it.

Many players in the WCHA have used it to their advantage… Chris Porter (UND), Robbie Earl (UW), and Garrett Roe (SCSU) are good examples past and present.

Watch out though… if/when Greg Shepherd leaves the WCHA, and if the WCHA goes out of house to hire a competent head of officials…. legal diving could be in trouble. But there’s no need to worry now.

Is “The Don” Lucia writing for you guys now? I’m from Minnesota and a semi-Minnesota fan – and to say the hit on Leddy was illegal is totally wrong. The picture in the paper showed the Anchorage player’s SHOULDER hitting Leddy. Not his elbows up, or him jumping up to hit him. How is that not clean? Leddy had been used to cutting to the middle with his head down in high school, and now that he’s in a man’s league, it caught up with him. Hopefully he learned his lesson. But due to the fact he got lit-up and that this Gopher team is softer than cotton doesn’t mean it was dirty like old, “Soon to be replaced by Blais next year” Lucia was whining about. The next thing he’ll want is to eliminate all hitting. It’s hockey people…keep your head up!

There’s no arguing that Portwood’s shoulder and Leddy’s head made serious contact. There’s no arguing that there is a hugely rising tide against any and all contact to the head in order to hopefully reduce injuries (especially the traumatic ones). Rectifying it though is more complex than just saying any contact to the head is going to be penalized.

That seems straightforward but some guys are taller than others. So unless you make everyone the same height you’re going to find big guys getting punished unfairly for contact to the head that couldn’t be avoided. If your answer is that the big guy should avoid the contact then you are likely going to seriously and permanently diminish the physical part of the game. Gretzky, Grandma and Motzko will be happy with that but not too many others will be.

It’s not a great analogy perhaps but imagine the first Major League Baseball manager that fields a lineup of guys all under 5’2". They’d never be called out on strikes because nobody could hit that strike zone consistently (exaggerating to make a point). So why shouldn’t a hockey coach encourage his team to duck and/or squat when they perceive contact is imminent? The contact to the head stuff is a problem. But it needs to be thoughtfully and carefully addressed in hockey. Blanket solutions rarely turn out well. I think the checking from behind emphasis shows some of that. There were more than a few very marginal calls of that variety that screwed some guys unfairly. Hysteria is never a good place to start. Some calm and thoughtful solutions can be found by reasonable folks without removing the physical element of the game we all (except Motzko) love.

“The mob” loves to jump on an apparent problem and dictate simple answers … take the BYU/NM womens soccer highlights of late. In more than a couple of those highlights the BYU players initiated the dirty play … in the two most played ones … the BYU player elbows that Lambert chick before getting punched in the back and in the other one the BYU player grabs Lambert’s shorts before getting tugged down by her ponytail. Both of those reactions may have been over the top but just seeing the big thing doesn’t mean the little thing didn’t happen.

Obviously you never played the game. There is a responsibility on both players when a hit happens. Nick leddy had his head down. Jade Portwood saw that and leveled him. I’m sure Mr. Portwood isn’t thinking, “Don’t hit his head while he is being so dumb as to cut slowly to the middle of the ice with his head down.” You never heard Eric Lindros whine about that when Scott Stevens caught him with his head down. Why? Beacause Lindros knew it was HIS mistake by cutting to the middle with his head down. I bet if we went back and watched those films Stevens inevitably hit Lindros in the head. Yet no penalty or Gopher whining took place after that. This is also true with all the checking from behind issues. A player puts himself in a bad position (his fault/responsibility) to be hit, and when he sees a hit coming, what does he do? Well, he turns his back!!! Why? Because he knows he’ll get a power play out of it. The difference here is this: You RARELY if EVER see a player in the NHL turn his back on a guy when he’s lined up. Why? Because the NHLer knows if he does that he’s going in head first into the boards and it may cost him his career (and millions!). You can’t just say – no head hitting in a contact sport. It doesn’t and won’t and can’t work that way. Now if it was dirty – I’d be all over Portwood with you. But it was a TEXTBOOK hit. Elbows in, shoulder lowered and through a guy. What more do you or Blais, er, I mean, Lucia for the mean time, want? Like I said, keep your head up Leddy and it won’t happen again.

The other disturbing aspect of all this is that there is a big hue and cry for suspensions when a hit injures someone whether or not it was called by the referee. But when a foul is committed that doesn’t injure anyone and someone later points it out they’re called a whiner. What’s next? Worse injuries get punished more? It seems to be going that way. I’m all about that guy Liambas (or whatever his name is) that nearly took that 16 year olds head off getting some serious punishment. But if the 16 year old got up missing a tooth instead of having his skull destroyed would Liambas be out for a year?

A foul is a foul. The resultant injury or lack of one shouldn’t be a factor. Look at the hit on Chris Drury. With no intent to hurt the guy and having been directed to pick up his physical game by Sutter … Glencross lines him up … circumstances change on the way to the hit and he clips his jaw … 9 out of 10 guys would bounce right back up from that. Unfortunately for Drury it seems like he’s got a glass jaw (no disrespect he’s a fine hockey player). If GlenX had hit someone else or If Drury hadn’t been hurt then Curtis wouldn’t be sitting out. We all like to see “wrongdoers” punished but doing an injustice to a marginal offender might be avoided with some detached unemotional rational thinking. That’s perhaps a lot to ask from hockey fans and the management who respond all to easily to their pressure.

In this latest incident the referee was clearly impacted by the fact that Wiercioch stayed down so long (you could see the ref evaluating him for injury signs … you could almost read the refs mind it was that clear). Then he sees Wiercioch thinking he’s going to play without even going back to the bench and consequently skating effectively on the ensuing 5 minute major so he realized that Wiercioch had “gamed” him and changes it from a DQ to a misconduct before signing the scoresheet. That in itself should display that making calls based on injuries or lack of injuries is a bad thing. Let’s not see the same sort of faking BS that happens in European soccer eh?

The only way these inconsistencies and after the fact hysteria is going to be corrected is through a serious long term effort of making little changes and evaluating their effectiveness. Acute rule changes can have major unanticipated consequences and so they should be avoided by rule makers; who absolutely should be doing their jobs sans emotion.

Like I said earlier … these sorts of things aren’t simple and they aren’t going to be solved with changes that just make us all feel better in our guts. There’s a delicate line between a player getting injured and one not getting injured in hockey … its partly responsible for making the game exciting. Mandating specific penalties always results in some injustices (the checking from behind mandate being a good example … a fair bit of injustice has occurred and still occurs in relation to that hysteria). And while those may be relatively small percentages it is not ever right to punish someone who’s infraction was relatively minor or even non-existent just because someone got hurt. Hate to use a political reference here but what’s the anti-death penalty saying? Better to let all the guilty go free than to execute one innocent man?