Foster and Mitchell
March 20th, 2008, 3:22 pm
The big news last night wasn’t that the Sharks gave up the lead on three different occasions and won in the shootout; it was the Kurtis Foster injury. Foster and Torrey Mitchell were skating hard for a puck behind the Wild net- Foster trying to touch-up for icing, Mitchell trying to prevent Foster from doing so. At full-out breakneck speed, Foster changed direction a bit, and Mitchell made contact. Foster ended up going into the boards so hard it was like a shotgun blast. The damage- a badly broken fibula that required surgery.
The NHL just decided not to suspend Mitchell. I think it’s a good call, although clearly I’m a Sharks fan and I’m biased. Suspending Mitchell would have been punishing him for the outcome of the play, not his conduct during it. When I saw the play at game-speed, I didn’t even think it should be a penalty. Since I haven’t found a working video yet, I have no reason to change my opinion. It was a hard play that went wrong, you see a hotly contested puck many times during a game, and a slip at the wrong time could result in serious injury like we saw last night.
It’s also sparked a debate about bringing in no-touch icing. I don’t have a really strong opinion one way or the other, but I’d lean a little towards keeping things the way they are, for two reasons. The first is the last thing hockey needs is more stoppages. Re-instituting tag-up offsides was a good move. Taking out a point of contention for the puck in favor of yet-another faceoff seems weird to me. The second is that it’s purely reactive measure that won’t have much benefit for the health of players. In my mind, there are better things the league could do to reduce injury (like require players to have their chin-strap somewhere near their chin), but if this incident leads to a rule change, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.
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I’m definitely ready for no-touch icing. For how little a play actually develops from a touch-up, and how serious the injuries that result from these kind of races end up being, there really is no point.
It could actually speed up the game by having a whistle immediately when the puck goes past the goal line. That’s the end result in a vast majority of potential icings anyway.
Fox Sports replayed this about 50 billion times so I’ll tell you what I remember seeing. Except for being the other guy in the race to the puck, I don’t think Mitchell caused this. From what I could tell, Foster lost his edge on his left skate just about at the goal line. Mitchell was behind and to the right of Foster, so I don’t think he caused him to lose that edge. Admittedly, Mitchell did put his hand on Foster’s back, but it didn’t look like he pushed him. Having lost his edge, Foster was going down either way. Mitchell didn’t force him into the boards any harder than he would have hit them normally.
So, there were really only 2 possible penalties – tripping and boarding – and technically this wasn’t either of them (though I’m sure Wild fans would disagree) and I agree that the NHL made the right call not to suspend Mitchell. The refs just called it immediately b/c it looked so bad (and obviously it was). Bad calls and no calls piss me off, but in this case I think it’s definitely better they called it. Otherwise the Wild might have started looking for payback. As it was, they started getting chippy toward the end of the game and an unavenged injury would’ve really escalated things.
On a side note, that 3-on-3 was really fun to watch.
Ian,
I might be convinced. I do worry about such a rule causing them to whistle icing more- now it seems like they wave off icing almost every time.
I was surprised that the penalty was for tripping. It didn’t appear to be what is usually checking from behind or boarding, either. It happened so quickly. Michell has a lot of speed. I think Foster was beginning to lose his balance when the players collided in a manner typical of many in a hockey game. A terrible incident. I can’t watch it again.
Although I am a Wild fan, I can understand why the league did not suspend Mitchell. I am not sure what the penalty should be because it happens so often in games without being a penalty.
Hope the team can pick it up without Foster. He will be missed.
BTW, Pronger is a little dirty– he plays on the edge.