What Player Safety?

A few weeks ago on The Hockey Show, I spent some time asking what exactly the Department of Player Safety does if it's not looking for the safety of players. We've seen a number of players be injured in December and into January where players have thrown rather questionable hits on players in prone positions, yet it's the players who retaliate who have received the harshest penalties from the NHL's Department of Player Safety. The player shown in the lede image in white is Nick Cousins who, according to all reports, is a good teammate and a hard-working player, but one of the analysts on Hockey Night in Canada has had enough of his questionable hits while avoiding punishment from both opposing players and the Department of Player Safety.

I normally want to see forward-thinking opinions from the panel as they discuss issues in hockey, and I have to say that I was impressed with Kevin Bieksa for calling out Nick Cousins and putting the onus on the Department of Player Safety to make the game safe for players once again if players won't change their behaviours. Here's the clip.

Before I chime in with my opinion, I feel that Bieksa painting Raffi Torres with "my good friend" before talking about the punishments he received for his very questionable, often illegal hits is like using that phrase before discussing murders committed by a serial killer. I take nothing away from their friendship, but this just seemed like a bad time to add that detail to his argument.

In any case, Bieksa's opinion on the matter is correct in that someone from the Panthers needs to sit Cousins down and explain how his play as a pest can't cross into playing dirty. If that happens like it did in Columbus and in Arizona, he's going to attract attention from the Department of Player Safety, but he's also going to have to fight his way out of those dirty hits. As shown by HNiC, Cousins doesn't fight that often, instead opting to turtle from the beating he's receiving, and the player administering the punishment is often the one who is suspended or penalized more harshly.

Even if one believes that both Valimaki and Gudbranson are partially to blame for being in prone positions with Cousins bearing down on them, that still makes Cousins partially responsible for the outcome because he finishes his check in both cases. If the players are in unsafe positions and Cousins goes ahead with his decision to finish the checks, shouldn't the Department of Player Safety be looking out for both Valimaki and Gudbranson when it comes to ensuring the game is played safely?

Instead, Gudbranson was suspended when he returned in the game against the Panthers and took matters into his own hands by laying a beating on Cousins who turtled as Gudbranson was applying his version of justice. The Department of Player Safety also suspended Arizona's Jason Zucker after he hammered Cousins into the boards following the hit on the vulnerable Valimaki. In both cases, Cousins somehow avoided any suspension for his dangerous hits, so where exactly does the "safe" part come into play when talking about the Department of Player Safety?

My workplace has a "Health and Safety Officer" whose primary job is to identify potentially hazardous situations and remedy them before they cause a problem or injury. If the Department of Player Safety was being held to the same standards, there should be no question that Nick Cousins' decisions on the ice put other players in potentially seriously harmful situations, prompting them to act on those concerns for player safety. It seems that's not the case as Cousins continually escapes punishments for his poor decisions, so what does the "Safety" part in "Department of Player Safety" actually mean?

I'm not here to attack George Parros, but if he's the guy in charge of protecting players from their colleagues and peers he should be able to rationally explain why Nick Cousins has yet to be suspended. We know that supplemental discipline can be handed down from the league even if no penalty was called on a play, and the very first line of CBA clause 18.2, Section A reads, "The type of conduct involved: conduct in violation of League Playing Rules, and whether the conduct is intentional or reckless, and involves the use of excessive and unnecessary force. Players are responsible for the consequences of their actions." Does that not capture Cousins' two hits on Valimaki and Gudbranson entirely - reckless, excessive, and unnecessary force?

Yes, both Gudbranson and Zucker were suspended for what they did AFTER Cousins threw his two hits, and I'm not arguing they shouldn't be suspended because their actions fall into the "reckless, excessive, and unnecessary force" categories as well. The problem here is that a reckless act of violence escalated to the point where Gudbranson and Zucker took it upon themselves to hand out justice.

Here's where the fault lies: rather than teaching Cousins that his decisions were made poorly through suspensions that would cost him playing time and money, they suspended the guys trying to teach Cousins a lesson through the old eye-for-an-eye method. Yes, that method should also result in suspensions - and both players were suspended - but I'm not sure Cousins is getting the message after turtling against Gudbranson and leaving the Arizona game with a concussion after Zucker pasted him against the glass. Maybe the Zucker hit will send a message, but I feel like it won't.

The short version of this article is that the Department of Player Safety needs to live up to its name by ensuring the game is made safer by removing those who cross the lines into dangerous actions territory. No one is saying that Nick Cousins isn't an NHL player nor that he doesn't deserve his NHL roster spot, but a lot of people - Kevin Bieksa and myself included - are saying that the hits he's throwing are putting the safety of other players at risk. In that statement alone, the Department of Player Safety should be acting to fix that problem, yet here we are discussing what the Department of Player Safety actually does.

The NHL may want to look at defining what the Department of Player Safety does before something far worse happens. Keeping the game safe for the players by reducing the number of people playing the game who are routinely making bad decisions would be an easy adjustment to make, but it seems the NHL has zero interest in making that happen.

I guess we just wait until someone gets seriously hurt again.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!