Eric Lindros Says It's Time For The NHL To Think About Removing Body Contact From The Game And For The First Time In My Life, I Disagree With Eric Lindros
National Post – Speaking at See The Light, a concussion symposium at Western University on Thursday, Lindros said it’s time for the NHL to seriously think about removing body contact from the game.
It’s a drastic suggestion — one at which a 20-year-old Lindros would probably roll his eyes. But if implemented, it could save the next generation from going through what Lindros and many other retired players are now dealing with, while also keeping the best parts of the sport intact.
“Let’s get right to it,” said Lindros. “You talk about me playing. I love hockey and I continue playing hockey. But it’s funny — the hockey I was playing all those years was really physical, and I have just as much fun (these days), but we don’t run into one another. We’re still having as much fun, the same enjoyment of it…
…Sure, you can improve the technology on helmets and instruct players on where they can and cannot hit. And scientists can figure out ways in which to better diagnose and treat head injuries. Or, as Lindros and Dryden suggested, the league can take away hitting altogether and put the focus simply on a player’s skill.
Ahhh shit. Well alright. This is going to be a tough blog for me to write. Because at 26-years-old, I still dream about a day where I can get adopted by Eric Lindros and call that man my dad. Hopefully my actual parents aren’t reading this but I’d probably consider Eric Lindros to be the most important person in my life. But I guess we all grow up at some point, and part of that growing up process is realizing that you’re not your parents and that some times you have different thoughts/beliefs than they do. And when it comes to contact in hockey, unfortunately I have to 100% disagree with Big E on this one.
Now let me first start out by saying that I think Eric Lindros is caught in a really tough spot here. Obviously everybody knows about how Eric’s career unfolded and the massive head injuries he sustained that brought his career to an end. And since his career ended, Eric Lindros has been a huge advocate for finding ways to prevent head injuries and concussions like the ones that he suffered while playing the game. And he’s done some really great work so far for concussion research so far and it’s clear that he has nothing but good intentions. But as somebody with a voice that carries as strong as his does on the subject of concussions and brain injuries, he probably feels like he needs to be a little more drastic than he actually needs to be in order to see any real change implemented. And I think he may even have been more drastic than he intended at that concussion symposium because he’s already backtracked the “ban body contact” statement a little on Twitter.
And that right there is an idea that I can at least 75% get down with. I think we can agree that in a perfect world, all body contact in hockey would either be a shoulder to the chest, or hip to hip. You simply cannot take those moments out of the game by banning body contact all together. It’s part of what makes this game so great, and it would be a completely different sport if you took those away. Now obviously banning body contact all together would eliminate illegal hits and shit like that but there are other ways to get those out of the game than to just ban hitting. Personally I’m of the belief that it’s on the players themselves to take those types of hits out of the game. You can make all the rule changes you want to try to eliminate those hits, but it’s really up to the players themselves to have more respect for everybody’s health and well being out there on the ice to not even attempt to take somebody’s head off. I understand that hockey is a fast paced and violent sport, and that sometimes you just lose control while trying to make a play and that’s how nasty hits happen. But I don’t know. I just feel like we could take a lot of injuries out of the game if players would stop being selfish and make more of an effort to deliver clean hits instead of just trying to take somebody out. I guess basically what I’m trying to say here is that hitting in hockey doesn’t give players concussions, assholes who can’t control themselves while hitting do. Do I need the NHL to come in here and take everybody’s hits away? Hell no. Because there are plenty of players who use them legally and should continue to be able to do so. It was written in Hockey Constitution. But as the game gets faster and faster, it’s more important now than ever to make sure that players are learning how to properly hit and how to properly get hit in order to keep the injuries to a minimum.
And that’s where I kind of disagree with Lindros when it comes to non contact leagues for youth. Because one “solution” we keep seeing thrown out there is pushing back the age where we allow hitting in hockey. And in theory, it’s a great idea. This gives the players more time to develop and focus more on their skills before they introduce hitting to the game. And hopefully by the time these players finally get to an age where they can hit, they’ve been playing so much non-contact hockey already that they just sort of disregard the hitting aspect all together because it’s just not what they’re used to. But unfortunately, that’s not how the real world works. What ends up happening is you’ve now got a bunch of 14-15-16 year old kids who are just starting to hit now that they have some actual size on them. Or at least some of them do depending on who hit puberty yet or not. So now you have little Tommy who has been playing hockey his whole life being able to just skate into the corner all willy nilly and come out of their with the loose puck unharmed. He’s going in for the puck against Billy who looks like he’s been driving himself to the games since he was 12-years-old. Before this wouldn’t be an issue for Tommy since he never had to worry about getting hit, but now he sees Billy get ready for contact, Tommy gets scared and doesn’t know how to take a hit so he instinctually turns his back to the contact, he gets hit into the boards from behind and now we have a serious injury on our hands. If I’ve said it once, I’ll say it a thousand times. Turning your back to contact along the boards is the most dangerous play in hockey and somehow we don’t teach kids when they first start playing to avoid making that mistake.
So yeah, I definitely don’t think we need to ban body contact in youth hockey if we’re going to allow it in the upper ages or pros. But I will meet Lindros in the middle and say that spring/summer hockey should be non-contact. During the actual season, these kids need to learn the correct way to hit and the correct way to get hit. But when it’s not the actual season? When you’re just playing in the spring and summer? That’s when the focus should solely be on developing skills. Take hitting away there, make sure that everybody stays safe, develop skills and then get back to allowing contact in fall/winter. I think that’s a pretty fair compromise. That way the next generation of hockey players are learning a little bit of everything. They’ll continue to play a faster, more skilled version of the game than the one from the 80s and 90s. But they also won’t be playing a completely different sport that doesn’t allow body contact at all, like soccer on ice or some shit like that. There are ways to fix the game and make it safer for everybody without completely changing it. That might just take a little longer than simply banning contact all together.
Advertisement
Sorry, Big E. I still love you. It’s just that idea is not good. And if this blog was a little rambley, sorry, tough to write 1400 words with a hangover and have it all make sense.