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God damn fucking pink hats! Seriously you people need to be up against a wall as soon as practically possible. There was nothing wrong with Orpik's hit. Nothing. Here is the hit.
Shoulder to shoulder, elbows down, feet on ice at point of contact, no strides taken prior to the hit, and the puck was in Eriksson's immediate vicinity. He goes straight through him. That hit is perfect.
I'm so fucking sick of how often I've had to say I'm so fucking sick of American hockey "fans" who don't know the game, haven't played the game, and started watching whenever their local team got half-decent (i.e. you missed the 90's), trying to express firmly held opinions about hockey. Just because someone gets hurt by a hit does not mean there was anything wrong with the hit. Players have been nearly killed, repeatedly, by clean hits over the years. Nowadays, anyone has to be helped off or misses a few games with injury and their fan base wants a Shanaban. I wish I could give you fuckers a concussion because you're killing this league.
I would have given Neal ten and Thornton... probably twelve.
The phone hearing is a max 5 game suspension, yes. But there's no rule as to whether a guy gets a phone hearing or in person. If Shanahan et al think they might want to suspend a guy for more than 5 games they'll fly him in. If they know they don't want to go over 5 they won't.
Yeah. Mainly because Orpik was defenseless... it was an ambush, he was attacked from behind and slewfooted to the ice. It was an ambush and retribution for a borderline hit on a star player - as I said earlier the hit was fine, but Shawn Thornton doesn't have the benefit of slow motion replay and is obviously biased. Basically, the Thornton thing reminded me more of the Bertuzzi / Moore thing than anything else.
At least Roussel saw it coming. The optics - Orpik being knocked out and having to be stretchered off - will also play a role in the suspension length. I think Rinaldo probably should get something. But then I have no idea what Roussel did to provoke that, Rinaldo's just kind of an idiot.
The wrinkle to all of this is that I think the rules should permit a guy to fight another guy even if he's not a willing combatant in some circumstances. If you hit a guy from behind or take a cheapshot or otherwise act like Brad Marchand, someone should be entitled to beat the living snot out of you. Basically it's just the "players police the game" thing. They can't do that right now because of the instigator rule, so my position is either you eliminate fighting altogether or you eliminate the instigator - no half measures. But we have to operate within the parameters of the league as it is not the league as it should be, and in this NHL, what Thornton did can't be tolerated (to be fair, it shouldn't be tolerated anyway, as a guy shouldn't have to fight after delivering a clean hit).
I tend to agree, based on my view that the NHL's supplementary discipline is too focused on results and not enough on intent and the nature of the play itself. What Neal did has no place in hockey and doesn't even resemble a hockey play. Consequently, the act itself was worse than what Thornton did, even though the consequences to Marchand weren't. For me, that balances out to ten games. Thornton gets twelve because let's face it, a slewfoot and a sucker punch don't belong in hockey either, and the results were worse.
But when you look at the acts themselves it's pretty obvious what Neal is trying to do. The only logical outcome of kneeing a guy in the head like that is, you want him taken to the hospital. When you knock a guy down and give him a couple of rabbit punches you do not expect him to be carted off like that.
