NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is driving his sport into the ground. Given the NHL's current status and the direction it's going, only the die-hard NHL fans will be left interested in watching games by the end of the decade. Does the league really want to scare away new viewers and fans? With scenes like this, that's what is going to happen:

Professional hockey is a violent sport. Hockey players are tougher than any other athlete in a team-based sport. Part of the reason is because every time they step onto the ice they take the risk of injuring their face. Players pay for standing in goal creases and getting physical with other players by taking legal and fair retaliatory hits from other players and thus smashing into boards or hitting the ice. But getting purposely knocked in the face with a stick is NOT a part of it.

Hollweg's hit against Chris Simon was brutal and deliberate, but it's a part of the normal risk that Simon takes when he steps onto the ice. If Hollweg's hit was unnecessary or unfair, then Simon should have taught Hollweg a lesson by looking him in the eye, dropping his gloves and fought him. Hockey players police their own game, and fighting is the last stop for dealing with unfairness and retaliation. By cross-checking Hollweg in the face, Simon took a cheap shot in a way that Hollweg was not expecting. Simon's act did not fall within the "expected" range of conduct on the ice. More significantly, Hollweg could have been more seriously injured, or could have been killed, from Simon's actions.

When hockey players fight, they usually end up with broken fingers - and at worst a lost tooth or fractured orbital bone. When you get slashed above the shoulders, you could lose your ability to speak, see, breathe, or even live.

It's still a mystery to me as to why hockey players police their own game and why the officials don't take care of it (that's for a new topic in the near future...). But since that is how the NHL's game works, Simon should have acted within that code. He went beyond the unspoken rules that the players set up for themselves and hit Hollweg with an unnecessary and dirty cheap shot.

If Bettman wants the NHL to grow and be a successful business, then he needs to eliminate these incidents. Along with its skill and finesse, hockey is also kind of barbaric. I don't think that the new fans the NHL is trying to attract really want to see the barbaric part of the game. The NHL needs to grow up and clean up. The NHL is often known for its polite, humble, selfless, and honest athletes (when was the last time you heard a hockey player say "they need to give me the puck more often"). But it's events like this that make the NHL stoop down to the immature level that the NBA and NFL often exhibit, in my opinion.

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