#*hockey

If player a does something worth suspension against player b, and player b is injured as a result, I feel like player a should be suspended for as many games as player b is out with the injury

so this take pops up every so often, and i wholly understand the sentiment behind it, but...

honestly it just would be so hard to do, practically.

some issues:

you'd get suspensions of unpredictable length, because you don't know exactly how long a player is going to be out.

depending on what sport you're thinking of, teams might be being asked to share a lot more medical information than they otherwise would.

depending on the players involved, it could lead to some weird unintended incentives. say your divisional opponent's top line center injured a fourth liner: might you be tempted to keep him out a few extra games, even if he's good to go? say you're gunning for a wildcard spot and your competition's ace pitcher gets frustrated and dings your bench infielder with a fastball: maybe you hold him out a bit longer than needed so the ace misses one more start?

injuries do not happen in a vacuum or necessarily as discrete events. maybe a hit aggravates a previous injury - would he have missed less time without the old injury? is it fair for the guy who hit him to sit out the whole time, or should it be prorated somehow? how do you calculate that?