Do not misread Capitals general manager George McPhee. There remain enough old-school men running NHL teams who wince when they see how the sport has changed over the last 20 years, who think the league has gone too far in the direction of player safety and has twisted how the game is played. McPhee, though he played in that more violent era, isn’t one of them. He’s among the vanguard of younger general managers who have pushed to solve a difficult equation: how to keep players safe and still maintain the essence of what people love about the NHL.
“I think the league has done a very good job in the last year of really defining what we need to do,” McPhee said in the wake of star Alex Ovechkin’s three-game suspension this week. “It’s been a difficult area for [general managers] to define. We’ve had certainly some comprehensive and extensive meetings about it, trying to figure out how we address certain hits, and we’ve come to a place where we think it’s clear. I think there was some gray in the past.”
But that gray area is McPhee’s biggest problem with the NHL’s suspension of Ovechkin for a hit on Pittsburgh defenseman Zbynek Michalek. The hit deserved some penalty. But because Ovechkin previously had two suspensions and two fines, the league felt it needed to send a stronger message. McPhee still disagrees with Ovechkin’s earlier punishments. That doesn’t mean he’s against player safety.
“What we want [Ovechkin] to do when he comes back is play the way he’s always played. We want him to be relentless. We want him to score goals. We want him to be physical,” McPhee said. “Unfortunately, our game has changed recently. Where we are with hits in today’s game has changed a lot the last couple of years. What was once tolerable or acceptable in our game — at all levels, the NHL or college or junior, the American [Hockey] League, youth hockey — is no longer acceptable or tolerable. Things have changed with certain hits, and we all have to adjust to it.”
– Brian McNally
