Steve Ott Suspended
First off , I want to warn you that I am about to break one of the cardinal rules of blogging . You know , the rule that says , “Never blog angry” . I am angry and you get to be the poor souls who are “unloaded” on . This blog maybe argumentative , but I can live with arguments .
My take on Steve Ott’s suspension is this ;
I am not here to argue whether the hit was legal or not . It does not matter any more but I will say that I have seen hits like that put on other players who were not injured and the player who gave the hit received no penalty or suspensions .
My whole fight about the hit and the suspension is the fact that when the hit was delivered , no penalty was assesed against Ott . That is mistake number one . Then THREE DAYS AFTER the game , he is suspended for the hit without pay because Leopold was injured . There is mistake number two .
The way I see it , either the NHL needs to come back and rescind the suspension or the officials who supposedly refereed the game need to come back and apologize for their failure on ice . Neither will happen because neither can be wrong .
The truth of the matter is somebody screwed up and somebody needs to have accountability for it . Refs are never punished because they ruined a game and Gary Bettman will never come out and say his staff was wrong . Hell will freeze solid before either happen .
If the refs apologize for their failure , then they would be acknowledging that they have made mistakes in hockey games that may have affected the outcome of the game and THAT could NEVER happen . They would publicly undermine everything that refs stand for , you know , ludicrous calls and the blind eye being turned on their favorite players’ obviously committed penalty . They would no longer be able to say that referees are infallible . But by failing to make the call in the first place and the suspension ensuing , they should have already done that for those who are paying attention . Sadly , only Stars fans are paying attention and not the NHL’s elite and that leads me into the next part of my complaint .
The NHL will never say that the suspension is wrong because if they do then they all look like fools for assessing it in the first place . They instead have made the referees look blind . The NHL is also infallible . They suspend Ott for his hit for three games with out pay because he injured Leopold’s pinky (or something equally weak) . Randy Jones probably ended Patrice Bergeons’s career and he was suspended for two games ! Of course the NHL is being fair . Consistency is the biggest problem here . If the NHL needs to wait for three days to see how badly the injured player was injured before handing out a suspension , then they need to do that with EVERY PLAYER’S suspension . They need to be even-handed with everything they do and not just do things under pressure from the NHL’s ‘darling teams’ . (It is NO secret that the Wings , Pens , Sens and Avs are the NHL’s darlings , in fact I challenge you to find a POSITIVE front page article on NHL.com about Our Dallas Stars or The Columbus Blue Jackets or ANY southern team ).
Whether the hit was clean or not , the NHL and the on-ice refs have both proven that somebody is wrong . Whomever it is needs to step up . I am starting to lose more faith in the league and I never had faith in the refs to behave properly (especially when McGeough is on the ice) . It is just a shame that Steve Ott has to pay $12,834.21 for it .
It really is a travesty that I did not even touch on the hits put on Morrow and the slew-footing of Modano the game in Colorado on the 8th . Or the inconsistency of the last minute high-stick put in Brenden Morrow’s mouth but not called . Just wait , that might spew out at another time when I have had enough and I am boiling over yet again . I blog angry .
