Five Games?

Five games, appartently that's the penalty for nearly killing another man on the ice. Maxim Lapierre, longtime NHL agitator, sent the Sharks' Dan Boyle into siezures after a wildly illegal and dirty hit in St. Louis last week. I want to be clear right off the bat (Stick?). As a sharks fan, I am looking at this from a biased perspective. But still, Brendan Shannahan must be out of his mind. His explanation videos do a great job of adding some lame "transparency" to the reasoning behind suspensions, but this one still baffles me.

Lets take a closer look at the recent suspensions of Brad Stuart, Patrick Kaleta and this one for Max Lapierre. Brad Stuart's hit on Rick Nash of the New York Rangers didn't look particularly terrible. At first glance, it appears Stuart delivers a check to chest of Nash. Stuart kept his elbows down, didn't launch off his skates and didn't target the head. However, when you slow the footage down, it is clear Stuart got a piece of Nash's head. He was not penalized during the game for the hit. The contact with the head was most likely unintentional, but Shannahan still deemed it suspension worthy. He gave Stuart three games as he had no previous history of illegal hits.

When you contrast the Stuart hit with that of Buffalo's Patrick Kaleta, the difference is night and day. Kaleta practially goes out of his way to plant an elbow to the head of Blue Jackets defenseman Jack Johnson. It is exactly the type of play Shannahan and the NHL are trying to eliminate from the game. Given the insidious nature of the hit and Kaleta's history of suspensions (four games for a headbutt in 2011 and five games for a blindside check in 2013), he received a ten game ban. Many viewed this as evidence of a tougher policy on Shannahan's part. However, the suspension of Maxim Lapierre has raised some questions.

Lapierre has always been known as an aggressive checking forward, agitator and all around pest on the ice. Most Sharks fans still hold disdain for him from his days with Anaheim and Vancouver. Personally, I wanted nothing more than to see Ryane Clowe rip his head off during the Western Conference Finals in 2011. I absolutely hated the guy. This hit on Dan Boyle has validated all of my hatred.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIO8ShhkJTc
Here's a link to the hit if you haven't seen it.

Boyle, along the half boards, turns his back to make a play. With his face already very close to the glass, Max Lapierre plants a firm check to his back. The check pushes Boyle's face and chin into the dasher and the glass. Let's ignore the fact that if Boyle had been fully upright the hit would have still been a pretty bad boarding penalty. But since Boyle was so low to the ice, Lapierre was able to drive down unnecessarily, into his back. Dan Boyle proceeded to convulse on the ice for several minutes. To me, the majority of the time a hard hit comes from behind, it is dirty. It's why there are block to the back penalties in football. This hit is worse, to me, than Kaleta's hit to Jack Johnson. At least Kaleta did it to Johnson's face. Yet Lapierre only received a five game suspension. Is this because he only has one previous offense? If that is indeed Brendan Shannahan's reasoning, the NHL Disciplinary Committee needs to work out some issues.

The severity of suspensions should not be solely based on the previous history of the offending player. Apparently the merit of a hit isn't taken into account. Apparently you can almost kill another player, and get away with five games.