It's shit like this

Holy shit how do you not suspend Shea Weber holy shit you guys seriously?

Did you not see this? Why have you not seen this? Go look at this.



My favorite angle is shown from about 0:43 to about 0:52 in that video. I'll wait. Watch it as many times as you like.

Sufficiently angry? Good. Here's the thing: not suspended at all. This is a league with humongous-big concussion problems! Even that one-and-only-hockey-player-we're-supposed-to-care-about had one for a while, you may have heard about it? Here's a great way to not reduce head injuries: allow players to just slam each other's heads into the boards like it ain't no thang. It is a thang, NHL. It is very much a thang. This is brutal, intentional, and has potential to cause serious head injury! This is a fucking no-brainer! Shanny, what say you?

"We reached out to Detroit following the game and were informed that Zetterberg did not suffer an apparent injury and should be in the lineup for Game 2. This play and the fine that addressed it will be significant factors in assessing any incidents involving Shea Weber throughout the remainder of the playoffs."

Right. 'Cause. You know. Weber did his best to slam Zetterberg's head into the boards in such a way that it wouldn't give him a concussion. You can clearly tell from the video: he angles his hand in such a way that the smash will only cause immediate pain, and definitely not any lasting damage. Obviously. Plus, we know for sure that Zetterberg is fine, because concussions always reveal themselves fully immediately following hits. Can't think of any famous concussion cases in recent NHL history, wherein a team didn't figure out its star player was concussed until a game or two later, right?

Look: Brendan Shanahan's job is hard. You can't always tell, analyzing the video of a play, whether something was malicious or incidental, and degree of injury doesn't always correspond to intent. These things are inherently subtle and subjective. But occasionally, you are handed a gift. Every once in a while, you get to see a video in which someone very obviously and intentionally picks up a dude's head and slams it hard into some plexiglass. Those are the days that you should rejoice that you finally got an easy one to get right.

We all recall that John Tortorella got fined $20,000 last week for calling the Penguins arrogant, right? (Yes, I know that Bettman said it was because Tortorella cursed in the presser. I'm far too lazy to go collect countless clips of coaches cursing in pressers, which they do all the time, without penalty. Everyone, including Torts, understands exactly why he was really fined.) I'm not here to complain about that fine, I'm here to present a basis of comparison.

The CBA states that the maximum player fine for an incident is $2500, and that's exactly what the NHL fined Weber today. Last week's post-game presser cost John Tortorella $20,000. I know the NHL can't do anything about the maximum player fine, but it could easily have found its nutsack and suspended Weber, if it wanted to make any kind of statement about player safety. Without a suspension, you're left with this incident looking, to the casual observer, ten times more acceptable than a head coach badmouthing another team. Why would the NHL want to send that kind of message?