Hits to the head

As their meetings ended today in Toronto, the league’s general managers agreed to establish a committee regarding the regulation of hits to players’ heads. The committee will report back to the GMs at their next meeting, in March, and any proposed rule change would need to be approved by the league’s competition committee and its Board of Governors. It’s not known whether the GMs would recommend banning all hits to the head, just blindside hits, or some hybrid. Dean Lombardi, I believe, is flying here right now, so hopefully I can catch up with him soon. For now, I talked to Matt Greene, the Kings’ player representative, and asked for his thoughts about what, if anything, should be done about hits to the head.

GREENE: “It’s hard to say. It’s a gray area. Obviously you don’t want to see guys getting concussions. It’s tough, because where do you draw the line? A lot of plays can start off as innocent. Maybe it’s just a size difference, hitting a smaller guy, and you really can’t help that sometimes. But the elbows, and some of the blatant disregard of respect for players, those need to be handled.

“I think you have to go case by case. If you start getting one general rule, you’re going to have innocent hits and malicious attacks and they’re going to get the same sentence. That just doesn’t make sense.”