the only thing that confuses me is that the hockey world can idolize players like hall-of-famer scott stevens - a guy who made a career of ending other peoples' careers and being over the top with his physical play - and then today make a complete 180 and if there's a late hit that wrecks somebody it warrants a suspension for the rest of the playoffs, next year's pre-season, and part of next year. even then, it really doesn't even punish the team. you could just have your worst player take out the other team's best and even with a 100 game suspension, you still hurt them more than you got hurt yourselves.
i think the nhl should look into implementing rules that actually deter players from engaging in those kind of shenanigans. for example, if your player gets suspended, you are not allowed to call another player up to replace him and have to suffer a hole in your line-up for the duration of the suspension. i guarantee that teams would be a lot more careful with sending out their bruisers to "deliver a message" to the other players if that were the case, because right now, you send a goon out, he gets suspended, you call another one up. what the fuck's the difference?
back on topic, though, yeah it was a dirty hit, but 25 games surprised me. i was thinking 5-10 myself, especially because it was barely a "launch", barely "late", and really just a hit to the head from a repeat offender that caused injury. the referees didn't even call a penalty on it. if a hit was that marginal that in-game, a referee standing 3 feet away made a quick judgement call and decided that it was too close to penalize, how can it possibly warrant 25 games. especially when there's shit like cross-checks to the face with intent to injure that get 3-5..
