The NHL wants chaos

That is all it really comes down to.

The big story in the second-round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs — so far — is Toronto Maple Leafs goalie Anthony Stolarz leaving Game 1 of their series against the Florida Panthers with some sort of a head injury. Nobody will say for sure if it was a concussion, but it’s not hard to put together the pieces of the puzzle and find a finished picture.

• He took a slap shot to the head that dislodged his mask early in the game.

• Later in the period he was elbowed in the head by Sam Bennett, immediately fell to the ice, skated over to the bench, puked on the bench, left the game, and was then taken to a hospital on a stretcher.

From my understanding, those are typically bad signs for the health of your brain. But I do admit, I am not an expert on that.

On Tuesday the story shifted from Stolarz leaving the game, to the NHL’s decision to not suspend Bennett for his latest incident that left an opposing player injured (likely with a concussion).

After thinking about it for a day, starting and re-starting this article, and just pondering everything being said about the situation, I think I have finally narrowed down what is bothering me the most about it.

It’s not a suspension vs. a lack of a suspension.

It’s not penalty vs. no penalty.

It’s not anything specifically related to the decision to punish or not punish Bennett.

I mean, that is all part of it. But on a bigger picture level, it’s the realization that, deep down, the NHL wants all of the chaos that is going to unfold in the coming games from this incident. It wants blood. It wants carnage. I truthfully believe there are a lot of people in the NHL — and watching the NHL — that just simply get some perverse enjoyment out of watching people get physically fucked up. Maybe not injured. Maybe not permanently damaged. But fucked up. At least temporarily. That’s why we marvel at the guy that played through a broken leg at the end of a series, and shout about how “hockey players are just built different!”

Old school hockey.

Beyond that, the NHL has a 24-hour news cycle between Games 1 and 2 to talk about it, it can be part of the hype package leading into Game 2, and when Toronto inevitably responds to Bennett and somebody fights him or takes a run at Sergei Bobrovsky it can all be a part of the post-series highlight package.

It’s also the fact the NHL just …. doesn’t seem to care. It doesn’t care about the visual of a starting goalie for one of the league’s highest profile teams throwing up on the bench after taking two hits to the head from a puck and a player.

It still doesn’t REALLY care about head injuries in a meaningful way.

It still doesn’t truly care about the safety of its players.

There are several layers to all of it that should lead to big questions, ranging from whether or not the concussion spotters would have had reason to pull Stolarz after taking the puck to the head, to how players like Bennett continues to live in the NHL’s gray area where they keep delivering these types of VERY borderline hits. They are hits that keep injuring players without ever having to really face meaningful consequences for it.

One of the things that bothered me the most on Tuesday was a Twitter thread from former NHL player Chris Pronger.

Pronger’s voice on this subject should carry some significant weight because he used to actually work for the NHL’s Department of Player Safety, which is an absolutely absurd thing to say about a guy that was suspended multiple times in his career.

When you also consider the current head of the DoPS is a former face-puncher that only made it to the NHL because of fighting, the whole thing is an outrageous farce.

But Pronger does know firsthand how the process works and has worked.

It was an eye-opening thread. But not in a good way. At least not for me.

Here is the entire thread:

There are so many things that stand out to me here that just make the entire process seem more like a PR sham than anything meaningful.

1) First, I flat-out disagree with the argument that simply calling a penalty eases the outcry. A lot of dirty plays get penalized with no suspension, and the lack of a suspension — as well as the perceived inconsistency with the suspensions — is always an issue.

2) The entire thing basically comes down to Pronger arguing, “Well …. what are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to measure anything here? How do we KNOW what caused the injury?”

It’s just a bunch of shoulder-shrugging and giving a Jim Halpert look at the camera while saying, “Nothing we can do here!”

Brother, it’s your job to figure it out. The purpose of the department, the reason your job existed, is to figure out what you are supposed to do and how you are supposed to handle difficult situations.

3) The sequence of Tweets where he flat out says, “Yes …. it was a deliberate elbow to the back of the goalies head” is where the stream of thoughts should have ended.

Goalies are supposed to be protected, especially when they are in the crease trying to make a save. It is one of the most defenseless positions on the ice for any player. There is a reason their designated area of the ice is painted a different color and why there are so many rules around it. Blatantly elbowing a goalie in the back of the head should probably warrant SOMETHING. Especially when this is a league that fined people $2,500 in the first-round for lobbing pucks across the red line during warmups.

4) The most laughable part, however, was the argument that Bennett and Stolarz are former teammates from just one year ago and there is just no way Pronger could ever see Bennett trying to intentionally injure his friend. You would have to be the dumbest, most naive, most “aw, shucks” person in existence to believe that thought process would ever enter into a player’s mind during any game, let alone a tightly contested playoff game against a divisional rival.

We saw brothers Luke and Brayden Schenn screaming at each in the Winnipeg-St. Louis series. The Primeau brothers once fought during a game. Friendship — and even family — stops when the puck drops. Especially for a player like Sam Bennett that would elbow or punch his own family to win a playoff game.

I have had enough conversations with DoPS people over the years to have some idea of how the process works.

I understand a lot of it.

I get why the NHL begins each review by removing the names, faces and results from the play and just analyzes the play itself.

The only question they ask is, “is this play suspension-worthy?”

If the answer to that question is yes, that is when a player’s past history becomes a part of the suspension process.

That is when any injury becomes a part of the suspension process.

All of those variables can — and do — impact how many games an offending player misses.

If the answer to the initial question is no, everybody moves on.

The whole point with that is to try and make it fair so certain players can not claim to be singled out or targeted by the league.

IN THEORY it makes sense.

In practice, it doesn’t always work.

It doesn’t work because you have players like Bennett, Brad Marchand and Jacob Trouba that learn where the line is and just how big of a gray area there is.

There’s a reason these same guys keep finding themselves at the center of these plays. It’s not bad luck. It’s not being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s not freak accidents.

Bennett knows what he’s doing. He knew what he was doing when he skated into Stolarz and ran his elbow into his head. Maybe he didn’t intend to send him to the hospital on a stretcher, but he absolutely intended to hit him in the head.

The problem with that is when you get hit in the head, sometimes bad things happen.

I am not necessarily advocating for players to be singled out and targeted. That WOULDN’T be fair. It could lead to personal vendettas getting in the way. Players would have a reason to fight back against the league and its rulings. There would be issues.

But is it fair to the rest of the players in the league to constantly be at risk of a severe — and perhaps avoidable — injury because the NHL doesn’t want to punish Sam Bennett and because Sam Bennett can’t stop hitting people in the head? Are there not issues with that?

What I am suggesting is for there to be an even stricter enforcement of rules and a tighter standard for what gets players suspended or penalized.

It’s a fast, physical game. Sometimes that will lead to injuries. That is an unavoidable outcome at times.

I am not against physical play or hitting. It is necessary. It can be effective. Sometimes you have to hit somebody to separate them from the puck or win a puck battle.

But the overwhelming majority of players in the league are able to do that while playing within the lines — in many cases physically — without getting close to them or consistently concussing their opponents.

And that comes back to the problem with players like Bennett.

Just because they do not get suspended doesn’t mean their plays are legal. Pronger himself admits the play should have been a penalty. It wasn’t a legal act. Matthew Tkachuk’s hit on Jake Guentzel — which was also not suspended — wasn’t within the rules. We can go on and on with more examples because I think this is a line that gets blurred here.

The whole reason The Department of Player Safety exists is because the sports world started to learn what happens when your head takes repeated blows and just how badly it can impact people.

Combined with the visuals of players like Marc Savard, David Booth and RJ Umberger getting absolutely annihilated by blatant, blind-sided head shots, as well as the looming threat of lawsuits, the DoPS was formed prior to the 2011-12 season with Brendan Shanahan leading the charge.

For one year he swung a hammer at people and suspended everybody he could, for as many games as he could. Suspensions were frequent, long, and meaningful.

Quickly, though, the NHL’s general managers and board of governors grew tired of it, complained a bunch, and he eventually left the department to run the Toronto Maple Leafs. That started a progressively downward trend to where we have a guy that used to sell a line of hockey gear called “Make Hockey Violent Again” leading it.

Regardless of their motives I DO think the NHL has taken steps to cut down the super blatant hits to the head.

I do think there has been some progress.

But they could be doing more if they really wanted to.

And when it comes to the playoffs, and when it comes to cultivating a certain style of play and energy, they just simply do not care to do that. Because deep down they still want the chaos. They still want the blood.