Thursday, June 09, 2011

Aaron Rome's Hit On Nathan Horton

Adam Rome's hit Nathan Horton has received major reaction.  People are for the suspension handed down and some people are against it.  I am against the suspension handed down.  Here is the video


YouTube link



Some people say including the commentators said that it was a late hit.  The hit occurred late.  That's is a plausible argument.  But people are making it seem that Horton is the victim here which can be.  Here is the problem with that.  Horton made the pass and kept looking and admiring his pass.  He had his head down not looking ahead to get out of the way and it looked as though Rome wasn't looking where he was going.  Sure it's unfortunate that Horton got injured, but part of the responsibility lies on him.

Here is a good point, that when Zdeno Chara hit Max Pacioretty nothing happened.  One of the league's top guys and of course nothing will happen.  Sure you can make the argument that Chara was just finishing the play.  But if you look at the following video, you can clearly see that Chara pushed Pacioretty into the boards.  The league did nothing about it.

YouTube link



If you are going to start handing down suspensions now in the playoffs, than you should do it throughout the whole playoffs and not just the Stanley Cup playoffs.  It shows that the NHL is losing integrity.  You can't pick and choose when you want to hand down suspensions.  You can't turn a blind on one thing and not to another.  If you want to eliminate all these types of hits that cause head injuries, that is fine, but it's not going to deter some people from making these type of hits if they know they could possibly get off without anything happening to them.  The league needs to be firm.  Even a one game suspension is better than nothing.

Sometimes the sentence handed down is too lenient.  After Claude Lemieux broke Kris Draper's face with a which needed reconstruction to fix his broken jaw (which was wired shut for a month) and broken cheekbone and a broken nose, as well as gave him a concussion.  Lemieux was suspended one game and only fined $1000.  The league needs to look over how they handle such hits and see if the punishment is appropriate.  If you look at the hits in the 90s, guys would take huge hits and get up after it.  Sure the hit Lemieux laid out Draper with was a serious one, but if someone was hit like Horton was in the 90s, people wouldn't think twice and if there was a sentence it would seem like a slap on the wrist.  Now people expect a sentence to be handed down for such hits.  I just think people are blowing the Rome hit on Horton out of proportion when if you look at Chara's hit on Pacioretty, it was worse and the league turned a blind eye.  If you want to do something about head shots and the like, than you have to hand down sentences on everything and not just somethings.  Until such a time when that happens, the NHL will continually lose integrity.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please don't spam the comments as they will be removed. The comments are for commenting the post not trying to sell something or get someone to your site. If it has nothing to do with my post, it will be removed. Thank you for your understanding.