Righteous Sack Beating - Nov. 1, 2009

Can anyone else believe the fact that I got this thing up here in time for my own self imposed deadline? Me neither. But boy did I have some fuel to work with this week. As a guy who got his bell rung twice during 12 years of minor hockey I'm all too familiar with how unfun concussions can be. But the only side effect they had on me was learning to be more aware of what was going on around me and to keep my head up. Which is the perfect segway for this weeks tirade.


Sack Beating to Keith Primeau and the rest of these prognosticators who won't shut the fuck up about "head shots". There is no way you are ever going to get rid of guys getting their bell rung unless you take hitting out of the game completely. And the day that the NHL takes hitting out is the day it folds and the KHL becomes the premiere hockey league in the world. I'm sorry Keith, but you are one of the only former players (who I know of anyway) that is dealing with the terrible side effects of multiple concussions sustained over a career as badly as you are. There have been numerous reports published that say the NHL has one of the lowest concussion rates of any contact sport. And for a sport where guys are flying around at 30 plus MPH in 20 pounds of equipment that's pretty remarkable.

There's been a number of guys getting rocked in the open ice lately, but no one should feel sorry for them. For one they are getting paid millions of dollars to play a game that the rest of us play for free or have to pay to play. And secondly they are professionals. You'd think by now they'd learn to skate with their fucking head up, or not to admire a pass while skating full speed into the offensive zone. They teach that shit to you the moment you start playing body contact hockey, so the fact that these guys continue to make those mistakes is no ones fault but their own.

It's fucking ridiculous. So if I'm a defenseman getting paid 4 million dollars a year, and a guy comes cutting across my blue line with his head down, I'm supposed to not hit him because there is a chance he could wind up with a concussion? No fucking way, that's retarded. My job is to stop him from scoring a goal, and within the confines of the rules I'm allowed to body check him in order to make sure that doesn't happen. If his face happens to slam into my shoulder then so be it. Accidents happen.

I think it's bullshit that referee's are calling penalties on these hits when they are clearly nothing but a clean hockey play. There is so much pressure from the outside that the NHL is slowly starting to fold, as always. You know why there are no rules in place for this type of thing yet? Because it's fucking bullshit and it's really hard to enforce. Remember when Scott Stevens almost killed Paul Karyia in the playoffs, when Kariya decided it was a good idea to put his head down while he cut across the blue line? No penalty. Stevens was fucking praised for that shit and it was because of hits like that he became one of my favorite players growing up. Now a days everyone's so fucking PC and is afraid of stepping on anyone's toes, not to mention the fact that everyone has somehow turned into a pussy and gets offended by anything and everything. So I can't say I'm surprised that the NHL is once again waning to pressure coming from people outside of the game of hockey that know nothing about it, but I'm still not happy about it. But anyway I guarantee if Stevens threw that exact same hit today people would be calling for him to be banned from the league. What a difference a decade makes huh?

Football players get crushed all the time and there are tons and tons of guys who's brains are almost mush by the time they retire, forcing them to live terrible lives outside of football. But you don't see people all over the news calling out the NFL to change the rules to eliminate this type of shit. No, it's part of the game they say. Well my friends these freak hits where a guy gets a concussion are part of the game too and they don't happen very often. It sucks when a guy gets hurt but I'm willing to wager dollars to doughnuts that more guys get seriously hurt every year getting slammed or slew footed into the end boards during a race on an icing than guys that get their bells rung in the open ice. Should we pad the end boards now? No they should change it to no touch icing but absolutely no one in the media aside from Don Cherry is vocal about that. But that's a topic for another time.

There is no way a "head shot" penalty is going to ever stop this type of injury from happening. There's elbowing penalties and guys still get elbowed every game. The instigator was put in place to try and phase out fighting and all it's done is slightly lower the amount of fights in a season. SLIGHTLY. They already have a checking to the head rule in the CHL, yet it still happens with just as much frequency as it did before the rule was in place. It's a full contact game. Guys are bound to smash their faces off someone's shoulder sooner or later. The only way I see to help quell this from happening as often as it does, which isn't very, is to teach kids about body contact much earlier than we do now. As soon as they can stand up on skates and chase the puck around they should be taught how to give a proper hit and more importantly how to take one. The media is, once again, making this out to be a much bigger deal than it is. It's terrible timing that 3 or 4 guys get injured this way in the span of a few weeks but let's be realistic here. It doesn't happen very often and I guarantee you we're probably going to go for a solid 2 month span before seeing another one, if not longer. The problem is not the head shots themselves, but the pussification of the game that teaches players bad habits that allow them to put themselves in a position to get hurt. Fuck the media for once again making a mountain out of a molehill. I want my hits and I want them to be hard. If a guy happens to get hurt then so be it. Collateral damage.
Keep your head up.


And a quick Sack Beating to Ray Emery's dad.



Seriously, this is Ray Emery's dad? The fucking Terrell Owens of the National Hockey League, and his dad looks like the principle of a junior high? That's unreal. His mom must be a fucking fire cracker, because this fucking guy looks like he wears his pants a little too high, drives a Hyundai and has a fucking swear jar in the kitchen. Well at least he raised a well mannered, well behaved, non-douchebag of a son. Oh, wait.


-jeanshorts