Dont play roster players during preseason. They play when regular season starts. Sure, they'll be rusty a few games, but there's way more deterrents in regular season.
-- star players need to play against players who actually have a stake in avoiding injury. No way a multimillionaire player sticks his knee out like that on that play. But a guy fighting to make the freaking AHL shouldnt be on the ice with a star player. All the microdecisions that result in that kind of collision change slightly when its a high caliber player averse to getting injured himself. Its like a well piloted plane avoiding danger edging by the obstruction because he anticipates the danger well before. However, a poorly piloted plane, as was the case here, finds itself in a situation it cant pull out from. Looking at the final split second of impact for a sign of intention is pointless. The poor piloting decisions started before. Thats why its nearly impossible to find a fault. Sure, not directly his fault at an intentional level, just a poor pilot with limited control of his monstrous frame directing unholy momentum and energy at multimillion dollar assets. Good job NHL!
-- so a proper analysis would look at the question of deterrent. Are there deterrents in the game itself that ensure players respect each other? Take for instance a major ingame or even post game suspension. Even if you suspend a player for a year it will have no bearing on the overall balance of the competition. Its a symbolic penalty as it has zero impact on the team. The player is a spare tire in a lower level league. But that player can ruin a teams future. How is it the NHL has created a situation in which no real punishment is possible for ending a players season? A real deterrent is having all your star players on the ice facing off against guys like Xman. Hey maybe now he thinks twice before sending his uncoordinated mound of flesh and limbs into oncoming traffic.
So really, its about making sure a game has real deterrents and real comparable consequences for actions, and making sure that a player that has absolutely no future in the nhl and skates around like he was born five minutes ago to a mare is nowhere in proximity to talent that ultimately pays his salary. That game was a joke. Why on earth is a preseason game a tryout for players trying to make the marlies?? Go play in ahl preseason games dude. Take your demonic knees and go wreck players of your own caliber if you want to make a career of it.
