ThreeStrikesandOut

I love it anytime that an athlete breaks one of a sport’s “unwritten rules” and it becomes the talk of the news media; about how the guy (or gal) knew better and it’s deplorable what they did. Then you ask them “was what they did illegal?” and they go “no but it’s an unwritten rule”, then you ask again, “was what they did against the rules?” and once again they’ll usually go on a thirty minute diatribe about how bush the move was, but finally must relent before my mighty intellect about how no real, on-paper rule exists, and therefore he really, technically, did nothing wrong.

That’s what happened in Game Three of the NHL Playoffs; and it happened during the Rangers/Devils game, when Sean Avery (who is a knucklehead, don’t get me wrong there), face-guarded Devils’ goalie Martin Brodeur, repeatedly, with his hockey stick, and then to add insult, Avery scored a goal after a couple of minutes of really getting in Brodeur’s face. It’s not hard to deduce that Avery’s actions may have flustered Brodeur, and contributed to the lapse of concentration that caused the goal to be scored, but the act itself was not illegal.

But it will be if he tries it in the next game. The NHL really nutted-up and got into reality, and instead of playing the “unwritten rules” game, they changed a rule in the middle of the playoffs. That’s ballsy. How many times have we seen an obvious act that should be against the rules, brushed off as “something that we’ll examine after the season?” It happens all the time in the NFL, MLB, and the NBA, and many of the times those rules are never changed. If A-Rod rattles a third baseman tomorrow by yelling “HA”, he’ll get killed for it in the media, but he’ll still technically only be breaking an “unwritten rule” of the game. The NBA suspended two players from the Suns last year for leaving the bench during a scuffle and everyone complained about how such a silly rule may have cost the Suns the NBA Championship, and how that rule was sure to be changed. It wasn’t. The NBA let it go, and the same thing could happen again, because they have allowed an all-encompassing rule to exist, where a judgment call is needed, because they didn’t want to change a rule. The NHL stepped up during the freaking playoffs and said, “there needs to be a rule against that”. I’ve been critical of the NHL before, but this action showed great reaction time, and it showed that the NHL is not afraid to improve their game when needed. According to Yahoo:

That was true Sunday, but not Monday. The NHL moved quickly to eliminate this activity by making an on-the-fly rule interpretation.

“An unsportsmanlike conduct minor penalty will be interpreted and applied, effective immediately, to a situation when an offensive player positions himself facing the opposition goaltender and engages in actions such as waving his arms or stick in front of the goaltender’s face, for the purpose of improperly interfering with and/or distracting the goaltender as opposed to positioning himself to try to make a play,” Colin Campbell, the NHL director of hockey operations said in a statement.

The NHL handled their business. Good job. This rule definitely needed to be changed. Because all guys will tell you; there’s nothing worse that having another guy wave his stick in front of your face. Here’s the video:

Other sports could take some lessons from the NHL on this. If it’s not a rule and needs to be, make it one. If it is a rule and doesn’t need to be one, then remove it. But otherwise, just play the freaking games already.

YahooSports