Quite frankly, i've really had enough of Don Cherry.
The last few years have seen the popular hockey analyst, spouting off about so many things other than hockey. That was annoying enough, to see anyone use a position on a broadcast such as Hockey Night in Canada to put forward his own agenda.
But, his comments on the Zdeno Chara incident have shown once again how he is missing the mark about what is going in the NHL. He agrees with the league's decision not to suspend the hulking Boston Bruin defenceman for the hit on Montreal forward Max Pacioretty, even though the game official at the time issued a match-penalty. A match-penalty is assessed because the play is deemed as an attempt to injure a player. The word intent is the key here. If the NHL wants anyone to have the ultimate regard for its on-ice officials, it needs to fully support those game decisions in its front office. Any match-penalty should carry an automatic suspension, and then allow the league to determine what that length should be. To assess nothing, what kind of message does that give anyone?
Perhaps there are changes that should be made at the Bell Centre, and perhaps those would decrease the kind of injury that can occur to players. It is very clear that when you watch the hit delivered by Chara, he was trying to drive Pacioretty through the boards to next week. He may not have been trying to hurt him that much, but be clear that he was attempting to make the Montreal forward feel it. The fact that the stanchion was there was not his fault, but it is his ultimate responsibility for what occurred as the result.
