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Instigator penalty has teams reluctant to retaliate for dirty hits.
By DAMIAN CRISTODERO, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 4, 2002
Bob Bourne wasn't exactly sure, but he could have sworn he saw steam coming from Clark Gillies' head.
The former Islanders teammates were talking about Game 5 of New York's violence-laden conference quarterfinal series against the Maple Leafs. Well, Gillies was talking. Bourne was looking for a fire extinguisher.
"Clarkie was fuming," Bourne said.
Gillies was at Toronto's Air Canada Centre during what to him seemed to be open season on the Islanders.
He saw Kenny Jonsson crumble to the ice with his eighth concussion after Toronto's Gary Roberts ran him into the end boards from behind. And he saw Michael Peca go down with a torn ACL in his left knee from a low Darcy Tucker hip check.
Two key players were out of the series because of actions that were, at best, irresponsible and, at worst, meant to injure.
Gillies, a feared Islanders enforcer, the guy who beat up Philadelphia's Dave Schultz, felt helpless.
"If he was there, he knows Jonsson would not have gotten hit and Tucker would not have done what he did," Bourne said.
"I would have immediately gone after them," Gillies said. "It lets the other team know that if you take liberties with our stars, you will pay the price."
In the NHL, however, no good deed goes unpunished. Start a fight, even in defense of a teammate assaulted by a dirty hit, and it will cost you 17 minutes in the penalty box: five for fighting, two for instigating the fight and 10 for misconduct.
It is Rule 56(a) and it was adopted to curtail fighting. Most just call it "the instigator penalty." Many wonder about its unintended consequences; consequences that some say put player safety at risk.
The Islanders did not immediately retaliate when Jonsson and Peca went down. Nor did Colorado when the Kings brutalized star Peter Forsberg throughout their quarterfinal series.
And the only thing Boston's Kyle McLaren endured after his brutal elbow to the face of Montreal's Richard Zednik was a shove from Patrice Brisebois.
It's understandable. No one wants to spend almost an entire period in the penalty box, and no one wants to give the opposition a power play, especially in playoffs.
There is real concern, though, that the lack of swift and brutal retaliation has emboldened players to hit more from behind, to get their sticks and elbows up, and to show less respect to other players.
As Gillies pointed out, Roberts built up speed with multiple strides before crushing Jonsson. And Tucker went for Peca's legs when he could have just as effectively removed him from the play with a shoulder check.
"That stuff used to be dealt with immediately," Gillies said. "I know that when we played, I didn't find too many guys taking too many cheap shots at Mike Bossy. Why do you think Wayne Gretzky didn't get run over all the time? Because (the Oilers) had Dave Semenko and Mark Messier, and guys who you would have to deal with for the rest of the game, the rest of the year and maybe forever."
The instigator rule was adopted by general managers for the 1992-93 season. It included a five-minute fighting penalty and game misconduct. The two-minute penalty was added and the game misconduct was changed to a 10-minute misconduct for 1996-97.
Mike Murphy, the NHL's vice president of hockey operations, said it was aimed at stopping tough guys from trying to get stars into the penalty box by pulling them into brawls.
And while fighting is down significantly (only 39.1 percent of games had fights in 2000-01), critics say the rule has substituted stick work for fist work.
Lightning coach John Tortorella said that is dangerous when there is no outlet for growing emotions.
"It's like a boiling pot," he said. "Guys get aggravated and you go through the second period and they're boiling because they haven't been able to settle their differences. And when the score is out of hand, it turns into a mess."
That is what happened in Game 6 between the Islanders and Maple Leafs when three fights broke out in the final 1:50 of New York's 5-3 victory Sunday.
"Let's face it," Lightning general manager Jay Feaster said. "If you go out there and take that instigator, it's not just the act of putting your team down a man, but you are down two (minutes). It's something where guys don't want to take that risk."
But Murphy said it's a risk worth taking. In fact, Murphy did not show much sympathy for the argument that a two-minute instigator penalty is stopping teams from enforcing order on the ice.
"If I felt as a coach, one of my good players was harassed or given the stick or elbowed in a fashion and I didn't like it, I put a tough guy out there. That's his job," Murphy said.
"Teams take some bad penalties over the course of a year. To get two minutes for an instigator as a deterrent, I'll pay that price and I'll kill that penalty. When you think about the trips and selfish hooks and talking penalties and unsportsmanlikes and 'my own agenda' type of plays, to get an instigator penalty is the least of my concerns."
The bottom line, Murphy said, is the instigator penalty "curbs player behavior away from brawling, and this league can't afford to have brawling. The games are too long already. You start opening the doors to players fighting whenever they want and you encourage brawling, and we don't want to encourage brawling."
Lightning television analyst Bobby "The Chief" Taylor does not agree fighting would increase without the instigator penalty.
"If you're held accountable by other players, it means more than anything," said Taylor, a backup goalie for the Flyers when they were the Broad Street Bullies. "You're still going to have guys who go after players and take cheap shots, but the numbers are going to be cut a great deal."
Murphy did allow that the 10-minute misconduct seemed punitive in the context of players fighting to defend teammates who have been cheap-shotted.
Feaster said that "in light of these playoffs," he expects general managers to debate the instigator penalty in the near future. Feaster said he would vote to eliminate it.
Short of that, Gillies said players must have more respect for each other.
"I know in the heat of the game you sometimes do things subconsciously," he said. "I didn't mean to run the guy's head through the boards, it was just part of the game at the time. But it's not part of the game.
"You have to control your actions. To hit a guy like that, and knowing you're smashing his head without him having any defense, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know you're going to do a lot of damage to this guy."
The question is, what should be the price of damage control?