In last night’s game between the Oilers and Kings, L.A.’s Drew Doughty delivered one of the biggest hits of the season on Oilers rookie Taylor Hall. As per the norm in the league of late, a scrum erupted after the hit because the Oilers were upset about their guy getting hit.
That foolish on-ice eruption led to Kings forward Wayne Simmonds getting pulled down from behind by Edmonton’s Ales Hemsky and coming away from the fracas as the only player to be injured.
Simmonds appeared to injure his knee and he’ll be out for at least the next two games for L.A. If you think it sounds colossally stupid that a player that had nothing to do with the hit that started everything came away as the only player injured because players freak out after any big hit, then Kings coach Terry Murray would say you’re on his side of the argument as he went into a tirade over the whole thing.
Rich Hammond of Kings Insider gets the rant from the Kings bench boss:
“These things are ridiculous. This whole scrum thing is so wrong. That’s a great hit by Doughty. This happens around the league now. This is prevalent everywhere. To me, this is an issue that somebody needs to address. You’ve got Simmonds getting jumped from behind and pulled backwards, and we’ve now lost a player, for certainly these two games.
I’ve seen this around the league. It’s a good hockey hit, and now everybody responds to a hockey hit. We’re going to end up taking hits right out of the game, the way things are going right now. It’s a concern for me. There has to be more (punishment), to me, out of that than just a two-minute minor.
Something has to be done to stop this kind of a reaction by the teams. The reaction by the teams, it doesn’t make any sense to me. You’re just playing the game of hockey, and it’s a clean hit. It’s one thing if a guy gets run from behind into the boards, and all that, but this is out of control, almost, at times.”
Murray is understandably angry over losing a player for at least a couple of games, but his anger is more than justified at what’s become a bad trend in the NHL. We’ve seen it happen more often than not when a big hit happens, a big scrum erupts and then some piddling penalties are handed out to both teams.
It’s ridiculous that these things happen but Murray has a good idea to dish out penalties to teams that start these unnecessary battles because they’re mad over a teammate taking a hit. In a lot of situations, the hit happens because the player getting dinged is either playing recklessly or trudges ahead completely unaware of their surroundings. In this case last night in Los Angeles, Dustin Penner is first man on the scene and looking to stir things up to “stick up” for his teammate.
Taking hits out of the game is not going to happen but taking stupid scrums can happen if you toss a guy in the box for instigating a situation after a big body check. More penalties in the game isn’t generally a good way to solve problems like this, but in cases like these it’d be a great way to keep teams from needlessly freaking out after a big hit.
The problem here is making a judgment call on when it’s “justifiable” to go out of your mind and go after someone for a hit. Bringing a moral code to the ice is a dicey thing to dare try to do and it’s doubtful the NHL would even consider giving it a shot. As it is, we’ll have to hope that teams can get smarter about these things all around. I’d also love to find a bag filled with money on the street.
