They are sometimes called goons, troglodytes, meat, or muscle. It is
said they cannot skate and chew bubble gum at the same time.
NHL enforcers are often thought of as intellectually deficient but this preseason several NHL tough-guys have shown some smart and creative thinking.
Case 1: John Scott vs. the Toronto Maple Leafs
John Scott may be the Heisenberg of the NHL
Scott may have managed to get two of the Toronto Maple Leaf's best players banned for the start of the regular season by sucker punching another player.
Knowing that enforcer John Scott was looking
for a fight, Toronto coach Randy Carlyle sent out his scoring line
to show his team wasn’t interested. John Scott however was still interested
Scott is eight inches taller then Kessel and weighs 68 pounds more. Kessel had 37 goals in his last full season.
Scott has one goal in his NHL career.
While there are supposed to be rules protecting
skill players from enforcers, like the Babylonian Hammurabi, Scott likes rules codified.
Scott dropped his gloves and proceeded to punch Phil Kessel
who defended himself by slashing Scott with his stick. Maple Leafs forward David Clarkson also left
the Toronto bench to join the fight and protect Kessel.
Kessel and Clarkson are NHL stars, far more
valuable than John Scott who has never played more than 40 games in an NHL season despite coming into the league in 2008-2009.
Kessel stood his ground like he was in Florida,
using his stick as a weapon to hack at Scott’s legs. According to TSN’s Bob McKenzie Kessel will likely be suspended.
While some may call Kessel a coward he cannot be blamed for not fighting Scott. In this situation Kessel serves
his team best by avoiding injury, and fighting Scott is a bad way of achieving that goal. While fans and players often
mock ‘turtling’ Kessel should have dropped to the ice and
used his arms to protect his head from Scott’s punches. Now the Maple Leafs may have to play the
beginning of the season without their best goal scorer.
While Kessel’s impression of samurai dualist Miyamoto Musashi may hurt the Toronto
Maple Leafs, what David Clarkson did was far worse. Leaving the bench to join a fight is a
mandatory 10 game suspension, and so Clarkson will not be eligible to play for
the Leafs until Oct. 25.
Clarkson was signed as a free agent last summer for US 5.25 million
dollars, which works out to about US $64,000 per game. This means in terms of games played,
Clarkson will now earn US $640, 243 sitting in the press box because of a meaningless preseason fight.
Leaf’s scoring forward Nazem Kadri also tried to leave the bench
during the fight but was held back by a teammate. Had Kadri succeeded he would have been
suspended ten games as well.
John Scott may not receive any supplemental discipline for his actions.
Case 2: Krys Barch and Brett Gallant vs. NHL helmet rule
Brett Gallant and Krys Barch fought three times on Sept 19
in New Jersey. While there is nothing
intuitively intelligent about two large, physically conditioned
men punching each other in the face, these two enforcers also managed to find their way around a new NHL rule.
Starting this season it is now a
penalty to remove one's own helmet before a fight.
Gallant and Barch are both looking to earn a consistent NHL roster spot this season and for both players fighting is an important part of their game.
Gallant and Barch exploited a loophole in the NHL's helmet rule in their second fight of the game. The two players met up on the ice, unclipped their
own helmet straps, removed each other’s helmets, and proceed to punch each other.
Because neither player remover their own helmet, both players received a five minute penalty for fighting, but no penalty for removing a helmet before a fight.
Any blog post that has a reference to Miyamoto Musashi, is a good blog post in my opinion.
ReplyDelete