If your going to make a point about a star player who currently can’t play because of a bannable hit… why not use Marc Savard instead? After all, he was hurt when Matt Cooke made a clear intent to target his head (behind the play I might add)… and hes never been the same since. Thats a far more clear example of what the league should be trying to prevent then what happened with Crosby, which was a simple accident.

With all that said, the league has actually created an environment over the last 5-10 years that makes concussions far more likely. Not only did they not punish Matt Cooke after several nasty headshots, making it clear for a long time that intentional headshots were just fine, but the new rules over the last few years make injury more likely. With the removal of holding a hooking, the game is much faster now… and the players are getting bigger and bigger. More speed and size means more force during hits/collisions…. which will lead to more concussions. A prime example of this is when an attacking player is chasing the puck that was dumped into the offensive zone. The defense use to be able to slow him down… thus giving some protection to the defender going back for the puck. Now however, your not allowed to slow down the attacking player at all, meaning he is coming in at full speed, and the defender retreaving the puck is a sitting duck. We have already seen some very nasty hits in this situation, and one very brutal one in the AHL.

Like it or not, slowing the game down is the one sure thing the league can do to reduce concussions right now. They won’t do that of course, because making a bit more money is far more important to the league then player safty.