Monday's Moral-Two For Slashing

The Headline?

This Just In: Chris Pronger is Awesome.


The Story?

In this past Saturday's game against the Buffalo Angry Slugs, The Philadelphia Flyers were getting absolutely destroyed by penalties with the lion's share coming from slashes due to sticks breaking. It seemed that every time two sticks met one would break and a Flyer would be in the box. Then, something awesome happened... Midway through the 1st... or 2nd, (doesn't matter) on a Sabre's power play, Chris Pronger took some random player into the boards along the flyers blue line. I don't remember who that player was and, again, for the purposes of this story, it doesn't really matter. What does matter is that the unnamed player turned around and swiped at the shaft of Chris Pronger's stick with about as much force as.... well... something that isn't very forceful at all.

Pronger then dropped his stick, threw his hands in the air and drew the penalty-two for slashing

The Moral?


If your stick makes contact with someone else's you're liable to spend 2 minutes in the box.

The point?

These automatic penalties are getting completely out of hand. Aside from delay of game penalties, there is a distinct gray area called "intent" that is being completely disregarded with these slash rulings. There is a marked difference between a tap, stick lift and a slash. The "smoking gun" rule of a broken stick punishes the consequence and not the action-something which is backwards. And now there's going to be the possible automatic penalty for a hit to the head? Well Dany Briere's trade value just went through the friggin roof because well, every hit on him is a hit to the head. The point, folks, is that the action should be the main criterium for issuing a penalty and/or suspension and the result should be secondary; not the other way around

The Solution?

Believe it or not, those guys that skate around with those neato shirts, you know, the ones with the slimming stripes on them. Well, apparently those guys are paid to make decisions about what is and what isn't a penalty. Who woulda thunk it? So maybe, just maybe we should let those guys, who get paid to use their noggins, actually use their noggins. Because, well, long story short, the rules are a lot like a hockey stick-most of the time it doesn't take a friggin genius to figure out when they've been broken

--TFS