Off Wing Opinion: The Raffi Torres Hit On Jason Williams

Off Wing Opinion: The Raffi Torres Hit On Jason Williams:

Club spokesman John Hahn said later that Williams was “fine.” Hahn said X rays and a CAT scan showed no problems. He also said Williams might have lost consciousness briefly and suffered a cut on his forehead.

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Williams may have suffered a concussion, but his main injury stemmed from his helmet taking the brunt of his impact on the ice. The pressure wave from a severe impact can cause the skin to basically peel apart at the juncture of helmet and forehead.

If he lost consciousness, he has a concussion, at least grade 1 — by definition. Now, is it serious? Not necessarily. Hopefully not, but losing consciousness is a basic symptom.

Saw the hit on TV. Painful to watch — and legal. Just as it’s painful to watch stevens on lindros.

After the game, we were watching TSN, and there was discussion about how the league needs to do something about injury causing hits.

you know what? NO THEY DON’T. Not unless you want to turn it into ringette. Hockey is a sport that is attractive for it’s combination of strength, speed, and finesse. It has a strong fan base who are attracted to the power and emotion of the game and its players. Some of the talking heads on TSN last night calling for the league to fix this are the same talking heads whining about how teh rule changes have taken the battle out of the slot and hamstrung defensemen’s ability to defend around the crease.

You can’t have it both ways. That an injury occurred doesn’t imply the hit was illegal or wrong. If you keep trying to make the game “safe”, you’ll simply drain the game of what makes it attractive to people. The players know, and we should realize, that injuries are part of the game. How players and teams react to them and compensate for them is a big aspect of the difference between a contender in October and a champion in April.

So you can’t keep this a fast, physical game AND take the injuries and big hits out of it. The league has to do what it can to make the game safe — but it can’t make the game safe, any more than Nascar can remove car crashes without destroying nascar. You have to do what you can to minimize them and their impact, while recognizing that they ARE part of the game. It’s a grey area, but life is grey, not black and white. The trick is finding the balance between “safe” and “boring”. You can kill the sport by moving too much in either direction.

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