Mar 12, 2016
Thumbs to "half responsible" suspension
TSN's Dave Hodge extends his thumbs to Dennis Wideman's suspension being reduced to 10 games, and to hockey talk between friends - in the White House or in your house.
By Dave Hodge
Either Dennis Wideman was responsible for his actions when he clobbered linesman Don Henderson or, because of a concussion, he wasn’t. And arbitrator James Oldham decided he was responsible, but he wasn’t. Or he wasn’t, but he was. Or he was half responsible.
If you accept the defence submitted by Wideman’s side, surely he must be fully exonerated. But if you can’t allow what Wideman did to go unpunished, the penalty as set out in NHL rules and applied by commissioner Gary Bettman must stand.
Since my logic didn’t prevail, and Oldham decided the glass was both half full and half empty, I am left to wonder if he flipped a coin and it landed on its side.
Whatever the official statements said or didn’t say, Oldham managed to make Wideman, the Calgary Flames, the NHLPA, the NHL, Bettman, the NHL Officials Association and Henderson furious.
It might be fine for others to laud the spirit of compromise, but there’s no basis for patting everybody on the back and saying things could have been worse.
If Wideman can get half his money back because he wasn’t in his right mind, Henrik Lundqvist should have argued for a one-minute penalty when he knocked the net off in anger after taking a blow to the head.
Most suspended NHL players should be able to try for lesser sentences on the basis that they didn’t mean to hurt anyone because often, they don’t.
And if a concussion cost Wideman a pile of money in salary after an NHL suspension made him miss 10 games he didn’t deserve to miss, he should want to be paid double for the next 10 games he plays.
It’s everybody’s fault that the process took so long and ensured that the suspension would be 20 games. There needs to be a “Wideman amendment” that prevents a recurrence. Hopefully, it wouldn’t need to be approved by an arbitrator.
Trading Places
Not to take the hockey kibitzing of Prime Minister Trudeau and President Obama too seriously, but it got me thinking, and that got me asking the following questions: “If hockey fans in Canada could trade Olympic gold medals for Stanley Cup wins by their favourite NHL team, would they? Conversely, if hockey fans in the United States could trade Stanley Cups by all sorts of teams since 1993, and especially the ones by Chicago, about which President Obama likes to boast, for USA Olympic success, would they?”
I believe the answer on both counts is “No.”
And that might not seem logical, but in a week that celebrates a lot of what is similar in the two great neighbouring countries, hockey represents something of a difference.
Canadians don’t like the fact that all seven of the NHL franchises based in hockey’s homeland are likely to miss the Stanley Cup playoffs this season. They gripe about that and about the Stanley Cup drought since Montreal’s win in ’93, but dare I say they’re used to it? You want to hear bitching and complaining? Put Canada anywhere lower than first in the upcoming World Cup, and committees will be formed in every bar with a TV to figure out the reason.
Unless I’m missing something, Americans watch hockey with a more regional approach. Chicago’s heroes are Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane and it doesn’t matter where they were born. For fans in the Windy City, it’s nice that Toews wins on Olympic ice and while they might prefer to see Kane wearing the gold medal, the more important thing is that both wind up with Stanley Cup rings. Sure, they sing the Star Spangled Banner with Jim Cornelison as if American pride is attached to a Blackhawks game, and yes, we remember cries of “USA! USA!” from Lake Placid in 1980, but otherwise, cities get hockey crazy in America and the whole country does that in Canada.
To prove me wrong, let it be the reverse, with the Stanley Cup in Canada and the number-one world ranking in the United States, and we’ll see who’s happiest and who’s grumpiest. Mind you, we might have to wait a while for that. Meanwhile, “thumbs up” to hockey talk between friends, in the White House or in your house.