It's all part of a contact game.
If you want to go with PWHL rules, I'm not going to say you're right or you're wrong.
The people who are misguided are the fence sitters, who want to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to supporting violence in the league with their dollars, but also deriding it when it crosses some sort of imaginary line that has never been there and is in no way enforceable.
I just don't like the fence sitters who like to pick and choose what flagrant violence is allowable in their bloodsport. Stop watching the NHL until they take contact and fighting out of the game. If you watch it, you're supporting that kind of brutality that we saw last night (in both instances).
You could argue that the NHL doesn't condone it, but they really do condone it. There are very few actual punishments that matter. Even suspensions and fines don't matter because the amount of money most players lose is negligible in the grand scheme of things. If the league and PA were serious about getting this kind of stuff out of the game, we would see suspensions like the one Pinto got for the gambling fiasco, where the player is "sufficiently hurt" in order to dissuade them or other players from ever doing it again. Do you think we would see another knee-on-knee, or a player get jumped from behind, if the penalty is 50 percent of their salary and missing half of a season?
Ultimately, whatever that guys name is should have dropped the gloves with the guy whose name I won't try to spell. Those are the norms of the game, for better or worse. At the same time, the league has to pretend that the sport isn't violent, so the guy whose name I won't try to spell should get a suspension, or be forced to do some sort of community service, like be a volunteer mod on the HF Trade board.
The Pinto suspension was an example of the league and PA being serious about something because it directly could conflict with their profits. The stuff about getting violence out of the game is mostly window dressing.
