Quote:
Originally Posted by ila
There is nothing wrong with a good clean body check. You're right that hard clean hits are part of the game. If done right a good clean hit will not injure another player, but it does have the potential to change the game in favour of the team doing the hitting.
I don't like to see fights and I don't like to see one player deliberately injuring another. I agree with criminial charges being pursued in cases of deliberate injury. However, one must take into account intention and method when deciding on criminal charges resulting from a hockey injury.
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One thing I disagree with you about is fighting, Ila. I enjoy watching a good fight in hockey, but it cannot be started by one person attacking the other from behind. They both have to be willing to "go at it" to be a good, clean fight(well, relatively clean anyhow
). It's hard when the player is someone like Sean Avery, a player that will antagonize and then either turtle right away or scamper away onto the bench.
Some things that I think constitute assault would be:
1. Using your stick like a weapon(such as McSorley did on Brashear a few years ago).
2. Attacking an unsuspecting player or a player that is not involved in the play whatsoever(such as the gutless son of Patrick Roy when he attacked the opposing goalie for NO FREAKING reason at all). Sucker punches are not cool.
3. Attacking someone with your skate. As evidenced by the injury to Cam Ward, the skate blade can cause
massive injuries. Players who stomp on other players should be charged as there is NO call for that BS. Look at what happened to the Detroit player last year(or was it the year before?), for example. He was accidentally nicked in the neck area with a skate and he bled everywhere. If he hadn't had the presence of mind to cover the cut with his hand and skate
immediately to the bench, a lot of experts say he could have easily bled to death. That was a scary sight to see(there was a huge trail of blood leading from where he got cut to the bench), and it looked like something out of a slasher movie.
There may be a couple of other things that players could do that would warrart an assault charge, but it usually goes by a case-by-case scenario.