Thoughts on Tom WIlson? I want to root for the Caps but wow, he makes it hard.
this is a hard question for a bunch of reasons, number one being that i am an ENORMOUS homer and believe the rules should apply extremely strictly to all players except the ones on my team, who have never done anything wrong in their lives, ever.
number two is that i donât think thereâs any point in talking about individual players in the league, in terms of violence. i know that sounds like iâm taking the easy way out, but the thing is, ââââââillegalââââââ checks to the head are not necessarily the problem, and theyâre certainly not, like, a just-tom-wilson-specific problem. there are players on every teamâEVERY teamâwho have made really gross, really scary hits on people. sometimes itâs an accident. sometimes it isnât. i think the problem i have is that the NHL canât decide whether it wants headshots to be something thatâs in the game at all, and because of that, calls are inconsistent, the rules are EXTREMELY unclear, and frankly, players are more likely to benefit from delivering a bad hit than they are to suffer for it.
the policy right now is SO esoteric and probably involves consulting with the spirit world on an NHL-branded ouija board to decide who has a hearing.Â
so like?Â
if the NHL wanted to get dangerous headshots out of the game, it would be really easy to do that. you just make it a priority and you make refs call it every time. EVERY time. even when the headshot is clearly accidental. even when the opposing playerâs head is up. you start handing out really severe penalties that make it so that getting called for a headshot can really, really screw with your teamâs bottom line, which is winning, and then you make sure people are getting called for headshots. players are gonna figure out real quick how to avoid a crash at the last minute.
itâs not a priority for the NHL and like, i donât really see the point of fixating on tom wilson about it. itâs a league-wide issue.
