THE NHL : Crime and Punishment Doesn’t Always Make Sense on the Ice

Center Pat LaFontaine of the Buffalo Sabres lies in a hospital bed, his jaw broken, a facial artery slashed, his hockey career interrupted for at least two months.

And the man who caused all this damage, Jamie Macoun of the Calgary Flames, keeps on skating.

King defenseman Larry Robinson was lies on the ice, writhing in pain, a deep cut above his left eye, a blood vessel ruptured.

And the man who caused this, Glenn Anderson of the Toronto Maple Leafs, keeps on skating.

Buffalo defenseman Kevin Haller gets cracked in the helmet by a stick. No harm. No damage. Not a minute lost.

And the man who caused this , Tomas Sandstrom of the Kings, is suspended for five games.

Follow the logic here? Believe it or not, there is some, misplaced though it may be.

According to the NHL, the operative word in these cases is intent .

In the LaFontaine case, Macoun was slashing at the Buffalo center below the waist, but the stick caromed off one of LaFontaine’s arms and hit him in the jaw.

That was not, in the opinion of those reviewing the videotape, Macoun’s intent. So, he was not suspended.

In the Robinson case, Anderson held his stick high in a “careless” manner, according to league officials, but again, there was no intent to injure. So, no suspension.

In the Sandstrom case, although he struck only a glancing blow off Haller’s helmet, there was a “deliberate intent to injure.”

Fair enough.

If officials deem that Sandstrom or anybody else intends to injure a fellow player, then, by all means, he should be suspended.

But maybe the problem is that the rule doesn’t go far enough. Maybe a second operative word, result , ought to be added.

It works that way in real life. If you get drunk, get in your car and kill a pedestrian, that was obviously not your intent, but you still pay the consequences for the results.

Not with a charge of first-degree murder, but with manslaughter.

The scenario could be carried over to the ice.

Intent is tough enough to determine by the referee on the scene. It might be next to impossible to ascertain on videotape.

When one player seriously injures another with his stick, that player ought to be punished with a suspension. Plain and simple.

This does not mean turning hockey into a noncontact sport. There should still be plenty of room for the jarring body checks that can bring a crowd to its feet and inspire a team.

But sticks are dangerous weapons and should be treated as such. There is no excuse for being “careless” out there.

Staring at the possibility of suspensions, a lot of players might suddenly curtail their carelessness.

If you crack somebody over the head on the street, even accidentally, sending them to the hospital, you probably won’t get off without a penalty of some kind.

Why should it be any different on the ice?

New York is his kind of town: If he had any doubts about leaving Edmonton, center Mark Messier has buried them beneath the huge, five-year contract he recently signed with the New York Rangers.

Messier, who was never offered more than $1.6 million with the Oilers, will make a minimum of $13 million in the New York deal, which will pay him $1.75 million this season, increasing to $2.75 million in the last year of the contract, at which time he’ll be 35.

In addition, Messier will receive a $1-million signing bonus.

Next come the other bonuses: $60,000 if the Rangers win their first round of the playoffs, $60,000 if they become divisional champions, $100,000 if they reach the Stanley Cup finals and another $100,000 if they win the Cup.

Then come the really far-out bonuses: $10,000 if the Rangers lead the league in penalty killing, another bonus for every Ranger shutout, another for one-goal games, and yet another salary increase if the Rangers’ goals-against average drops.

Messier doesn’t need an agent. He needs a statistician.

Bernie’s back: Bernie Nicholls, traded from the Rangers to Edmonton at the start of the season, refused to report until his wife, Heather, gave birth to the twins she has been carrying.

With the successful delivery of the babies last week, Nicholls has agreed to join the Oilers.

Said Edmonton General Manager Glen Sather: “I feel like I should be the one giving out cigars.”

Sticking to it: When the Kings visited Calgary last week, Harvey the Hound, the Flames’ mascot, showed up with a stick that looked as if it had been driven through his head. Around Harvey’s neck was a sign reading, “I just met Tom Webster.”

Add Webster: A cartoon in the Calgary Sun showed a referee in a rink surrounded by sticks puncturing everything from the sideboards to the ice. The referee is telling a bystander, “I don’t care if he’s been suspended. I still say Tom Webster is somewhere in the building.”

Last add Webster: Heard on a Canadian station, on the subject of Webster’s outburst: “He has a history of these isolated incidents.”