Advertising Opportunities

If new NHL Senior Vice President and Director of Hockey Operations Colin Campbell were Kenneth Starr, Monica Lewinsky would be the one in hot water. Since the beginning of the season, Campbell has suspended 17 players a total of 60 games.

Is Campbell a hangin' judge or is this another in a long list of examples of where the league goes wacky on the latest rules-emphasis mandate for the first two months of the season, then slinks back to its cave?

Introducing Campbell as new Lord of Discipline in July, NHL Commissioner Basketball Jones said that an important part of Campbell's job would be to crack down on deliberate noggin knocks, such as the one Gary Suter laid on Paul Kariya last winter, which shelved Kariya for the Olympics and the rest of the season. The league is concerned about the safety and health of its players, fostering a family environment for fans by eliminating gratuitous violence, and also about making big piles of money.

"Right now, if you look at it from a fiscal point of view," Campbell said in July -- meaning he got the hang of this league management insider gig early on -- "when you lose the top players it has a devastating effect." That's just exactly what I was thinking when I watched Pat LaFontaine announce his retirement this summer.

Cynics among us saw an ass-backwards example of this Protect-the-Stars emphasis in Campbell's review of Eric Lindros' crushing check on Andreas Dackell in Ottawa on October 29. Lindros sort of took an extra stride, kind of left his skates a little, maybe had his elbow up a smidge, but no penalty was called on the ice. Not even delay of game, when the final 4:47 of the first period had to be played after intermission so they could scrape Dackell off the boards and ice.

Campbell reviewed the incident, and Lindros was exonerated. Rightly so, because it was a legal hit. One wondered, though, whether that would have made a lick of difference if it had been say Mike Maneluk who mushed Dackell? Of course, that thought of one's was fleeting, since one can't imagine Maneluk mushing much of anything.

Still, whether the rules are different for Eric Lindros than for minor cogs in the NHL's marketing machine, and whatever is behind the new ream of suspensions, they're doing the game good.

Through November 25 of last season, Campbell's bombastic predecessor, Brian Burke, handed out a mere four suspensions, and only one was for actions on the ice. The other three were for verbal abuse of an official or for uttering racial slurs.

Through November 25 of this season, Campbell has already dealt more than four times as many suspensions, with all save Reid Simpson's two-game vacation for throwing a water bottle at a fan being for actions taken on the ice. And there have been some significant suspensions. Los Angeles King tough guy Matt Johnson was given 12 games for sucker punching Jeff Beukeboom. San Jose's Andrei Nazarov was clipped for seven games after cross-checking Cam Russell in the face. There has also been one five-game sentence and three others of four games.

Compare that to Burke who issued 25 suspensions all of last season for a total of 64 games, with the average penalty being 2.56 games in length.

Suspensions themselves don't necessarily do the league any good, but consistency in handing them out sure does.

Players under the previous regime didn't know whether the elbow to the head they were about to deliver would draw a four-game suspension or a chuckle of delight from Burke. Neither did fans, current or potential. And players, particularly the league's superstars in the goon cross hairs, didn't know whether they were going to be the next Kariya. Or LaFontaine.

It says here that Campbell is the kind of steady, common-sense administrator that will keep this up. Asking a team of referees to consistently apply rules against obstruction for example is one thing. Human nature, that part of it anyway that wants to let the players play and wants to get a good table at Chez Paree before it gets too crowded, allows refs to be more lax as the season wears on. Suspensions are a different animal. They're more visible. Everyone in the world has seen the act in question before Campbell has to make a decision, not just 15,000 beered-up live witnesses (3,602, in Greensboro), and Kerry Fraser's decision to give Rumun Ndur two for obstruction-holding doesn't appear on ESPN2's Bottom Line forty-eight times during National Hockey Night.

If Campbell leaves one thing to be desired compared to Burke, it's that he's unbearably dull. Speaking of the non-suspension of Lindros, Campbell acknowledged that it was a tough call and pointed out that the situation raised several issues the league needs to address and all that. Burke said, "It was a hard hit and an unfortunate injury, but if you don't want to get hurt don't play this game."

That's why we miss Burke a little. But, to the league's credit, it no longer has an inmate as its warden.

CAMPBELL'S HIT LIST

PLAYER            REASON             LENGTH
Ruslan Salei      Slew Footing       5 games
Keith Jones       Blow to the Head   2 games
Richard Smehlik   High-sticking      1 game
Turner Stevenson  Elbowing           2 games
Rob DiMaio        Elbowing           2 games
Denny Lambert     Slashing           4 games
Dave Manson       Elbowing           3 games
Matthew Barnaby   Blow to the Head   4 games
Bobby Holik       Slew Footing       2 games
Erico Ciccone     Elbowing           1 game
Sean Brown        High-sticking      3 games
Reid Simpson      Fan Abuse          2 games
Peter Worrell     Elbowing           3 games
Andrei Nazarov    Cross-checking     7 games
Richard Zednik    High-sticking      4 games
Matt Johnson      Sucker Punch      12 games
Craig Berube      Abuse of Official  3 games

[ issues | stats | nhl archive | home | nhl history | about us | search | comments ]