The NFL wants its stars to shine, and the NHL does not

The NHL caters to players that play the way the dinosaurs in charge want them to play.

The NHL’s Department of Player Safety suspended Edmonton Oilers Connor McDavid — the league’s best player — this week for three games for cross-checking Vancouver Canucks forward Conor Garland in the face.

It was a well deserved suspension.

It was fair.

It was just.

It was something that had to be done.

As a long-time critic of the DoPS for its inconsistency and often times soft punishment and increasingly blind eye toward dirty and dangerous plays, I was legitimately surprised they hit both him and Vancouver’s Tyler Myers (another cross-check on the same sequence of plays) with multiple game suspensions.

In a vacuum I have zero issue or complaint with the suspension itself. In fact, stick fouls are probably not punished anywhere near enough.

What I have a problem with is the environment the NHL has created and encouraged (over DECADES) where it has pretty much catered to the league’s dinosaurs and not really given a shit about its best players.

There is a belief among fans of rival teams that the NHL’s stars get preferential treatment, and that you can’t even look at Sidney Crosby or McDavid without getting a penalty, or suspended, or thrown out of the league.

“Could you imagine if somebody did that to McDavid?” is the type of argument you here every time something happens in the league.

But there is zero evidence to support that belief, especially when we look at the NHL in comparison to a league — the NFL — that DOES treat its superstar players that way.

The NFL knows quarterbacks are king. They are the moneymakers. They are the players that change franchises and shape what the league looks like in terms of success.

Which team is good, which team is bad. Which team is a contender, which is a pretender. The quarterbacks dictate all of that more than anybody. And the league treats them as such.

Almost frustratingly so.

The Houston Texans were flagged for two unnecessary roughness penalties against Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes on Saturday that almost pushed ESPN’s Troy Aikman to a breaking point. On the second one, you could audibly here him say “Oh, come on” as the call was being made, while he proceeded to call out Mahomes for trying to buy a call on a later player.

Every rule in the NFL right now, every new rule, every rule change and every on-field initiative from the league is geared toward improving offense, improving scoring and keeping the best players healthy and on the field. Not only that, but also giving them an opportunity to shine.

Quarterbacks and wide receivers are treated with softest of gloves from a rules standpoint and a discipline standpoint.

Do they go too far with it?

Maybe. Probably. Is it consistently applied across all tier levels of quarterbacks? It is probably not.

But the NFL still knows where it’s bread is buttered and knows what players it needs to put front and center.

It caters to its stars.

The NHL? It mostly caters to bums and their bum style of play.

Or at the very least, it caters to the players that play the style of play the dinosaurs in charge prefer and want to see.

It always has. From Gretzky and Lemieux, to Crosby and McDavid.

The “let them play” mentality. The “put the whistles away” style of officiating. The “you have to pay the price going to the net” mindset.

The way the rules seem to change in the last five minutes of a game and in the playoffs versus the regular season and in the first period of games.

McDavid’s cross-check to Garland’s face was not some random act. It was retaliation. It was frustration. Just prior to the cross-check Garland had tackled McDavid to the ice, would not let him get back up, and then tackled him again right in the middle of the ice, in plain view of the officials as the Oilers are trying to tie the game. There were at least two or three penalties on the sequence.

None of them were called.

That is a common occurrence for the league’s best players.

McDavid snapped, took matters into his own hands, and busted the guy in the face after the play.

Again, he SHOULD be suspended for this. No complaint here.

But Garland shouldn’t be allowed to do what he did in an effort to “defend” and protect a one-goal lead. It’s bullshit. It’s not hockey.

From a big picture standpoint, if the league simply called penalties and created an environment where players were not comfortable playing that way in an effort to defend players like McDavid, none of that sequence happens.

Garland does not feel comfortable defending that way because he knows there are consequences that might hurt his team if he does.

McDavid does not have a reason to try and knock out somebody’s teeth.

But it is not just about this one play. There are some numbers behind it. Let’s talk about it.