The NHL / Tracy Dodds : Tougher Rules Are Having a Hit-or-Miss Effect on Violence in Hockey

While Brian O’Neill, executive vice president of the National Hockey League, was issuing suspensions and formal statements in response to last week’s incidents that were “dangerous and totally unacceptable to the league,” notice was served that hockey’s tradition of an eye for an eye would prevail.

More widely quoted than anything O’Neill said was the promise by Steve Dykstra of the Pittsburgh Penguins that David Shaw of the New York Rangers, the player who slashed Penguin star Mario Lemieux Sunday, would not go unpunished.

Dykstra said: “The next time we play New York, he’s dead. And if he doesn’t have the courage to dress, I’ll get him in the stands. . . .

“We play these guys 6 more times. He’ll get his. Nobody swings his stick at Mario Lemieux and walks away.”

And Pittsburgh’s Mark Kachowski predicted, “It’s going to be a war next time.”

Next time? Sunday’s third period took an hour to play, what with fights that had to be refereed and the 273 penalty minutes that had to be handed out.

So much for cutting back on the violence in hockey.

O’Neill hadn’t even had a chance to rule on what the league will do about Shaw’s infraction--a swing of the stick that left Lemieux lying on the ice for about 5 minutes with a bruised sternum--when Dykstra pronounced his sentence.

O’Neill is expected to rule on the Shaw incident sometime today. He had to hear all sides and look at the videotape.

The rule that was supposed to cut down on the use of a hockey stick as a weapon--calling for a major penalty and an automatic game misconduct if a player injures someone by high-sticking, slashing, butt-ending, cross-checking or spearing--doesn’t seem to be having that effect.

Look at the Lemieux incident. That apparently started when Lemieux cross-checked Shaw.

Ranger Coach Michel Bergeron says it actually started even earlier, when Kachowski “jumped” Ranger defenseman James Patrick.

Bergeron further clouds the issue by blaming Pittsburgh Coach Gene Ubriaco, a longtime minor league coach who is in his first year as an NHL coach.

Bergeron said: “He wanted his team to play a tough game, but I feel he lost control of his players. He tried to stop it, but he couldn’t. I don’t know him very well, but he’s not going to last long if he continues to coach that way.”

O’Neill did get tough with the Philadelphia Flyers’ Rick Tocchet, the Edmonton Oilers’ Mark Messier and the Chicago Blackhawks’ Dave Manson on Monday.

O’Neill suspended Tocchet for 10 games for gouging Dean Chynoweth’s right eye during a fight in a game against the New York Islanders last Thursday. He suspended Messier for 6 games for breaking four of Rich Sutter’s teeth with his stick in a game against the Vancouver Canucks on Oct. 23. And he suspended Manson for 10 games for a postgame fight with the Canucks’ Dave Bruce on Friday night.

Referee Andy van Hellemond was right on top of the Tocchet-Chynoweth tangle and gave Tocchet a match penalty on the spot, although Tocchet said: “I’ve been in 90 fights in the NHL and, to me, this doesn’t seem any different from any other one.”

Also pending is the case against Patrick for breaking the jaw of the Flyers’ Ron Sutter with his stick. Philadelphia General Manager Bob Clarke was sending videotapes to O’Neill. Clarke called Patrick’s high-stick cross-check “vicious . . . unnecessary . . . unprovoked,” and he called for the suspension of Patrick. Sutter will be out for an indefinite period.

Lemieux, with 16 goals and 22 assists after 11 games, just might win the scoring title again this year, and he is on pace to threaten Wayne Gretzky’s league-record 92-goal season of 1981-82. Lemieux’s 10-game total of 37 points was better than Mike Bossy’s 32 points at the start of the Islanders’ 1984-85 season, the previous best 10-game start in NHL history.

It should come as no surprise that Lemieux reportedly wants to renegotiate his salary, citing the approximately $2 million annual salary that Gretzky is getting in Los Angeles. Lemieux would like to go from $600,000 a year to $1.5 million a year. The Penguins are said to have offered $1.1 million a year over 7 years.

Dino Ciccarelli says it’s no fun to be a North Star and he wants to be traded. He added: “You can make all the money you want. But you still want to have fun and win. If you’re not having fun, they can’t pay you enough money.”

Minnesota has the worst record in the league at 2-8-1. Ciccarelli said, “If it doesn’t work, you have to fix it. . . . Whether that means trading me or someone else, maybe they have to do it. But it doesn’t take a genius to see what they have to offer. . . . (Coach Pierre) Page apparently handed in his trade list to the general manager. There’s a number of guys he wants to move.

“All I know is, it’s gotten depressing again. . . . We’ve been losing for 3 years with the same players, and how many coaches have we had?”

The North Stars have had 5 coaches in the past 6 years. They probably didn’t have much fun, either.

Bob Probert, the Detroit Red Wings forward who has been in and out of treatment for alcoholism and on and off the team, is currently off the team and is not considered admissible to the United States.

Probert, who is from Windsor, Ontario, had been barred before by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, but last year he was given a 1-year permit to work in the United States because there seemed to be a “a wide public interest’ in seeing him play hockey. Now that the year is up, the interest seems to be gone.

Asked why Probert was considered inadmissible, Kathryn Dawson, assistant district director of the INS in Detroit, said that was between Probert and the agency. But, she added: “Alcoholism is one of 33 grounds under which a person can be ruled inadmissible, and his problems with alcohol are certainly public knowledge.”

According to Patrick Ducharme, Probert’s lawyer and agent, Probert was informed by the INS when he attempted to cross the border from Windsor that he was no longer with the team.

“They advised him--I can tell you the exact words because they’re still ringing in my ears--’We have information that you’re no longer with the Red Wings.’ ”

Detroit Coach Jacques Demers said he wasn’t concerned about the visa problem. “He would not be on this team now, even if he had a visa,” Demers said. “As of (Friday), we have not even thought about reinstating Probert.”

Everywhere he goes in Canada, Gretzky is the top story. Canadians love him. And everywhere he goes, they still want to talk about “The Trade.”

In a column in the Winnipeg Free Press Friday, Scott Taylor wrote of Gretzky: “He looked wasted.

“It was well past 10 p.m. in Winnipeg, and after a morning practice and a 5-hour flight from Los Angeles to the snow, Wayne Gretzky and the rest of the Kings were ready for a short snack and a long snooze.

“ ‘Ah, come on guys, it’s been a long day,’ Gretzky said to the two press vultures waiting with their tape recorders loaded in the lobby of the hotel. ‘Let me get some sleep.’

“He then snickered, dropped his bags and talked. Frankly, it would have been uncharacteristic for him to refuse.

“It was Day 80 of The Trade . . . “

And still counting.