Willie Mitchel: NHL Safety Enforcement is Failing Find Out Why
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The Florida Panthers have made his return to the ice ultimately Mitchell’s call, and he’s not sure what call he’ll make.
Selected by the New Jersey Devils in the 1996 NHL Entry Draft, he played two seasons with the Albany River Rats of the American Hockey League (AHL) while earning limited playing time with the Devils over two seasons. In 2001, he was traded to the Minnesota Wild where he played four seasons before a brief stint with the Dallas Stars. He signed with the Vancouver Canucks in the 2006 off-season and was named the team’s top defenceman twice, in 2008 and 2009. After four seasons in Vancouver, Mitchell signed with the Los Angeles Kings in August 2010. While with Los Angeles, Mitchell won two Stanley Cups (2012 and 2014) before signing with the Florida Panthers in the 2014 off-season.
“Guys need protection. There’s a concern with players. Guys are worried about it. Guys talk about it – the league isn’t doing enough to protect the players,” Mitchell said. “A couple of years back, a 20-game suspension was a message. You’d be missing games, you get a big chunk of money taken from your pocket – a quarter of your (annual) salary gone. Those suspensions had gotten the game safer – still physical, still fast. Shanny (Brendan Shanahan, then the league’s chief disciplinarian) did a great job. But it’s not like that now.”
As Arash Madani notes, the NHL has handed out 27 suspensions for player-on-player hits this season, and 26 of them were for five or fewer games. Which is, of course, partially due to the NHLPA-negotiated appeals option that’s triggered by a six-game suspension. (The Department of Player Safety has long-denied this option’s influence, but the numbers are what they are.)
Continued Mitchell:
“Players are worried and guys talk about it here in the dressing room, but don’t say much (publicly) because they think they’re going to get fined,” Mitchell said. “But I can tell you: players are worried about it.
“I’d like to think I’m a rational guy. I’m not an F-U guy. I’m not criticizing the league as a whole,” he said. “If my game slips, a coach will come tell me, it’s slipping. Well, on trying to protect us, the league is slipping.”
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Hockey is a family of sports in which two teams play against each other by trying to maneuver a ball or a puck into the opponent's goal using a hockey stick. In many areas, one sport (typically field hockey or ice hockey is generally referred to simply as hockey.
