Marc Savard and Hits to the Head

Just as it took a season-ending hit to the knees of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady in the 2008 season opener to alter NFL rules regarding low hits, could it be the injury of another Boston-area pro athlete that causes the NHL to enact rule changes regarding hits to the head?

On Sunday, Bruins center Marc Savard was on the receiving end of either an elbow or a shoulder, depending on whom you believe, from Pittsburgh's Matt Cooke after Savard had released a shot, leaving himself in a vulnerable position in which he could not protect himself. Savard, who was removed from the Mellon Arena ice on a stretcher, said today that he blacked out for 15 to 20 seconds and the Bruins have diagnosed him with a concussion.

As it happens, NHL general managers are meeting in Florida and the subject of whether or how to change rules regarding hits to the head already sat on the agenda. At a previous meeting in November in Toronto, the general managers were unable to agree on a solution.

Could the timing of Cooke's unpenalized result in a rule change? Eventually, I believe the general managers will begin to look at Savard's injury in the same way that the NFL perceived rule changes it has made to protect quarterbacks and in regards to hits to the head. NHL GMs could debate the minutiae forever -- is the player on the receiving end of the hit at fault for having his head down, etc. -- but in the end I believe it will come down to a business decision.

NHL general managers are, after all, businessmen -- ask any player who has ever negotiated a contract with one -- and the newer strain in vogue in the NHL in terms of hiring GMs is that they tend to be younger or more educated or both. Boston's Peter Chiarelli attended Harvard and worked as an agent. Toronto's Brian Burke and Washington's George McPhee both have law degrees. Pittsburgh's Ray Shero, Minnesota's Chuck Fletcher and Chicago's Stan Bowman, while their fathers were accomplished, if not legendary, old-school hockey figures, also hail from a younger generation who did not come up through the former player route in the way that former old-school Flyers general manager Bob Clarke and ex-Bruins man Harry Sinden did. Dallas' Joe Nieuwendyk played at Cornell. I could go on and on.

Eventually, I believe, the general managers will see that hits to the head are bad for business just as the NFL saw that protecting the knees (and heads, under prior rule changes) of one of its marquee stars like Brady was integral to its business. How many fans wanted to tune in to watch Matt Cassel instead of Brady on a Patriots' schedule that had many nationally televised games on it?

Savard might not be Sidney Crosby or Alex Ovechkin, but he's one of the game's elite passers. In the four seasons prior to this one, only San Jose's Joe Thornton totaled more assists than Savard's 269. And his team is in a dogfight to make the playoffs. With 18 games left, Boston sits uncomfortably in the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, two points up on the New York Rangers.

The Bruins also happen to be the NHL's lowest-scoring team at 2.31 points per game and Savard is their top offensive player. He is tied for third on the team in points with 33 because he has missed 23 games with two other injuries, a sprained knee and a broken foot. A two-time All-Star who has led Boston in points for the three prior seasons, he has averaged 0.80 points per game this season. That's more than Bruins' points leader Patrice Bergeron's 0.68 per game.

So if you were Chiarelli and Bruins coach Claude Julien -- who called Savard "our best player" after Sunday's game in calling for Cooke to be suspended -- how would you like your post-trade deadline chances to make the playoffs now that Chiarelli decided that the price to pay to add scoring was more than he wanted to pay? If the Bruins don't make it in large part because they can't score, what would owner Jeremy Jacobs think of the niceties of the hits-to-the-head debate as he's missing out on playoff revenue and his team once again yields the local media spotlight to the Celtics' postseason and Red Sox's regular season?

Just as the NHL saw the careers of premier stars like Eric Lindros and Pat LaFontaine diminished because of concussions, it does not need to lose anymore -- or any player for that matter. In the end, the issue involves player safety, which should create an outcry from the NHLPA.

At its essence, a body check's reason for being is to separate the man from the puck. That can still be accomplished without concussive hits to the head.

Idea of Thrashers' Move Is Laughable

Once again a vaporous rumor has emerged from Canada that the Atlanta Thrashers are imminently about to move. Ten months ago the supposed destination was Hamilton. This time ot is the frosted plains of Manitoba and poor jilted Winnipeg.

Personally, I thought the Winnipeg Free Press did a pretty good job of how it handled this story. It addressed every single wild rumor, practically down to, "My dog was at the park and heard that..." and then basically shot them all down. Like so many of these reports, this one was unsourced, leaving one to wonder where these come from all of the time. Is it as simple these days as starting a campaign on Twitter? That was about as strong of a source as the Free Press cited.

Nonetheless, the story seemed to whip up the locals into a frenzy, including the city's Mayor Sam Katz who told the paper, "I can tell you when you hear from as many sources I've heard from, there's a good possibility." So the mayor's source, apparently, also was the grapevine. Just a more high-falutin' grapevine. What a surprise -- a politician telling his constituents something that they wanted to hear. Never mind that a spokesman for the group reputed to be the buyer of the Thrashers stated that "it's completely false."

As Winnipeg has a successful AHL franchise, one rumor involved that franchise moving with a junior hockey franchise from Saskatoon taking its place. Both the junior team's owner and the Western Hockey League's commissioner shot that one down.

So, basically, we have a baseless rumor. These ceaseless rumors appear to be fed by a variety of factors, namely Canadians' insatiable appetite for a seventh franchise. With good reason, Canadian hockey fans are upset by the migration of franchises in Quebec and Winnipeg to the United States. One of those, the Colorado Avalanche, became a model for economic and on-ice success while the other became the poster child for quite the opposite. It would be as if the St. Louis Cardinals and the Baltimore Orioles moved to Canada and one played in front of sold-out crowds and won multiple championships while the other played in front of half-empty stadiums in a city that showed no interest -- selling hamburgers to vegetarians as, Sports Illustrated's Michael Farber has put it.

The second factor for these rumors is that many question the economic viability of franchises in nontraditional U.S. markets that have had difficulty in winning and, as a result, drawing crowds. (Ownership problems in Nashville, Tampa Bay and Phoenix have fueled this way of thinking.)

Let me state why Atlanta -- even with an ownership group that has been mired in litigation for eyars -- is different and why, in my opinion, really, I see it as a set of facts, as to why the Thrashers are going nowhere.

Fact No. 1

This under-reported fact basically makes it impossible for the Thrashers to move: On May 10 of last year Thrashers general manager Don Waddell, seemingly out of a desire to put this to rest this issue forever, shed some light on a legal agreement that the NHL and the Atlanta Spirit ownership had previously not publicized. Waddell told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (I cannot link to some of these stories because the AJC's archives require a paid subscription) that naming rights to Philips Arena require the presence of both an NHL and NBA franchise. That agreement will pay $9.3 million for nine more years. So there's a paltry 84 million reasons why the Thrashers won't move.

Secondly, Waddell also stated that when the team's current owners, known as Atlanta Spirit, agreed to buy the team in 2003 they signed a binding commitment with the NHL to keep the team in Atlanta for a certain number of years. He would not reveal how many but said the number was "multiple." Of course, I'm sure the lack of specificity could fuel the conspiracy theories, but Waddell, so tired of addressing the issue, said, "I've been through this so many times, but the truth is there are too many obstacles."

Fact No. 2

The NHL wants Atlanta. For those from the Great White North who have never been to Atlanta, the city is far different from Raleigh and Nashville and Ft. Lauderdale and even, to some degree, Phoenix and Tampa.

Atlanta is the eighth largest television market in the United States. Atlanta has 2.3875 million television households, as defined by Nielsen. And the market continues to grow. In 2009, it trailed Boston, the seventh largest television market, by 40,000 TV households. In 2010, it trailed The Hub of Hockey, as Kevin Dupont has christened it, by 33,000. So, it's foreseeable that Atlanta will overtake Boston in a few years. With a population in the metropolitan area of between 4.5 and 5 million (depending how far out of the urban core you go), Atlanta would be the second largest city in Canada.

As a result, the NHL wants and needs a market of this size. Look at the lengths to which the NHL has gone to keep teams in the 12th (Phoenix), 23rd (Pittsburgh) and 26th (Nashville) largest markets. What comes with a market of Atlanta's size are corporations that have enormous amounts of sponsorship dollars to spend. Thirteen Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in Georgia -- most of them in Atlanta with a few others within 100 miles -- including Home Depot (revenues of $71 billion in 2008), Coca-Cola ($31.9 billion) Delta Air Lines ($22.7 billion), UPS ($51.5 billion) and SunTrust Banks ($12.8 billion). Last June, another Fortune 500, NCR, announced it was moving its headquarters to suburban Atlanta. In late 2007, Invesco announced it was moving its corporate headquarters from London to Atlanta.

This is the type of place the NHL knows it has to be. Here's how NHL commissioner Gary Bettman put it to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Jeff Schultz earlier this month:

“We think it’s very important [for the league] and we believe that whatever issues the franchise has, they can be overcome, and ultimately the franchise can be successful. We have a strong track record of addressing franchise problems and not abandoning cities. Look at Phoenix. I don’t think you need to go much farther down the road than that. But look at Buffalo, Ottawa, Pittsburgh. All three have had problems at some point, but they’ve all been successful.

“When the ownership situation is resolved, we believe the franchise will be able to move forward. We’re committed to the market. Our track record indicates we do everything we can do to avoid relocation.”

Fact No. 3

The NHLPA wants to be in Atlanta. Shortly before the NHL All-Star Game came to Atlanta two years ago, I interviewed then-NHLPA executive director Paul Kelly and we discussed his views on the viability of nontraditional markets. Remember, the NHL salary cap is a function of all 30 teams' revenues, so among the chief jobs of the PA's executive director is to help grow revenues so player salaries will grow commensurately.

Here is the quote in that story from Kelly, a Bostonian, that I always hark back to: "It's obviously vitally important that there be a franchise in Atlanta. I do [believe] more so than others because it's obviously one of the major boom markets of the United States. It's one of the major TV markets.

"Do we need two franchises in Florida? Maybe not ... Do we need another franchise somewhere in Las Vegas? Maybe again, that's a crapshoot as to how a franchise would do in Las Vegas."

Now, that was two years ago and Kelly is no longer running the union. Will his successor espouse the same view? It's hard to say. But the logic -- the population and the dollars -- is hard to dispute.

I'm sure that misinformed Canadian publications will continue to throw out the Thrashers' name when another Canadian city or prospective ownership group announces that it wants to -- surprise, surprise -- return an NHL team to its rightful place. And it's true that the Thrashers' attendance has been down -- Waddell admitted as much when he traded Ilya Kovalchuk recently -- but that is a function of winning as much as anything.

The Thrashers have shown an ability to draw when they provides excitement: They did in their inaugural season and they did in 2005-06 when they narrowly missed the playoffs, with Philips operating at 84 percent of capacity, and again in 2006-07, its lone playoff appearance (88 percent capacity).

As ESPN.com's Scott Burnside, a transplanted Canadian who is now a metro Atlanta resident, has written and observed: Buffalo was thought to be a bad market until the Sabres turned things around post-lockout and became one of the NHL's hottest tickets in 2006-07. The same is true of Washington.

Atlanta is no different.

Sutton's Hit

In my last post, I wrote about how Andy Sutton ruined my Thanksgiving in 2006. On Tuesday, the New York Islander did far worse to Pittsburgh Penguins forward Pascal Dupuis, with whom he played in both Minnesota and Atlanta.

I don't mean to make light of the situation. For those who haven't seen the grisly video, it's available on YouTube. Let's hope that Dupuis comes out of this without any ill effects.

I've seen at least one story written by someone whom I respect who attests to Sutton's character, saying that that likely will be taken into consideration in assessing any additional discipline than the game misconduct he received on Tuesday.

Sutton certainly is no Todd Bertuzzi, but he does have his own history. I covered Sutton for years in Atlanta and got to know him pretty well. Let's say his personality is fairly complex. In terms of book smarts, he's probably one of the more intelligent players in the NHL. He once told me that he was an environmental engineering major in college at Michigan Tech -- how many pro hockey players can say that? -- and that the possibility of playing hockey professionally did not seem to be a serious option for him until he reached his junior season, so, until then, he had focused mainly on his education. Also, he is a fairly sensitive when it comes to criticism, a reputation he earned in Atlanta from both coaches and media alike.

Amid all this, he can be guilty of some of the worst mental lapses on the ice -- the kind that would infuriate coaches and teammates. I'll note a few, including some that include questionable hits.

The first that comes to mind was not a hit but still ranks among the dumbest things I've ever seen a hockey player do on the ice. The Thrashers had won three out of four following a six-game losing streak. They were finishing up a seven-game road trip in Philadelphia on Feb. 21, 2004, and had fought hard to rally from a 3-0 deficit to play to a 4-4 tie with 61 seconds left in regulation. On a relatively harmless 2-on-2, Sutton was playing left defense. John LeClair had broken his stick in the Thrashers' zone and it lay there for several minutes, not having been removed from the ice. Sutton used his stick to flip the broken one at the puck carrier, Simon Gagne, to dislodge the puck. The officials immediately awarded Gagne a penalty shot and he scored for a 5-4 victory. Ilya Kovalchuk received a gross misconduct penalty at 20:00 of the third period. Marc Savard smashed his stick at the boards.

Here's what Sutton said after the game: "We looked at the tape, and it was the right call. I was mostly upset because the stick sat there for so long. Usually those guys pick the stick up. I think both the referee and the linesman -- although I think they made the right call -- I think they both skated by the stick a couple of times. I was just mad because it sat there and I could have tripped over it just as easily and he could have come in and scored that way. "They made the right call. It was unfortunate it came in a tie game with a minute left."

The tone sounds somewhat similar to what a repentant Sutton told reporters after Tuesday's game: "Just playing my usual game, trying to play hard, finish checks. I feel awful. I've played with Pascal. I've known him a long time. I obviously never intended for that happen."

The next incident that comes to mind will figure most prominently in what NHL Director of Hockey Operations Colin Campbell chooses to do in whether to hand Sutton a suspension. I was not present that night (I was attending a friend's wedding) but the Thrashers lost to Toronto 9-1 in October 2005. Sutton's hit on Darcy Tucker that night was remarkably similar to the one he delivered on Dupuis on Tuesday, except that Tucker had the good fortune not to hit his head on the dasher. Nonetheless, Tucker required 20 stitches and Sutton was suspended for four games.

I remember the explanation I was given at the time was that when the 6-foot-6 Sutton went to deliver the blow with his arms they were at the same level as the head of the 5-foot-10 Tucker. (Here's the video.) I guess Campbell did not believe that one. Because the opponent was Toronto, which receives the most media coverage in the NHL, and Leafs coach Pat Quinn loudly complained afterward, the Thrashers started to receive a reputation for playing like goons. Here's what Sutton said about that perception: "I think it's totally inaccurate. When I was playing against Toronto, in no shape or way was I trying to hurt anyone. I play hard."

It's understandable -- though not acceptable -- when players get frustrated in a big loss and make some errors in discipline. What's harder to understand is when they do it in a game that they're winning. That is what eventually touched off the 2006 Thanksgiving Eve brawl with Washington -- Sutton's head-hunting of Mike Green in a game the Thrashers were in command of and ended with 176 penalty minutes. Sutton received a double-minor for roughing and high-sticking at 18:38 of the third period with the Thrashers up 4-2.

And that game had something of a precedent. The previous season in a game against Washington in which the Thrashers were less than a minute away from victory, Sutton delivered a thunderous check along the boards to Washington defenseman Ivan Majesky, Sutton's teammate in Atlanta in 2003-04. The hit was legal, but completely unnecessary -- the kind that serves only to infuriate opponents and display questionable judgment.

The point is that this list of incidents is not akin to anything done by Donald Brashear, who has a long history of suspensions. It is not to equate Sutton to the likes of Brashear -- to the contrary, Sutton has proven himself as a fairly productive top four defenseman on his last two teams and he is an important piece on a surprising Islanders team that is in the Eastern Conference's playoff race.

But it does show that Sutton has something of a history as a result of lapses of judgment more than malice. With hits to the head becoming a bigger issue for the NHL, this is exactly the type of incident on which Campbell could take a stand. How much of a stand is up to him and what he makes of Sutton's history.