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jstewismybastardson
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Tyler Dellow ... attorney ... says it isnt a defense of Torres but seems like it is to me
in summary ... "Torres' has always played on the edge; is it his fault that hockey is redefining where the edge should be?"
interesting read Cost of a big hit | mc79hockey.com ... good comments section too - i still think his continued repeated stupidity needs to be punished severely
I initially had a whole thing written about Torres, offering some defence of him. I decided to delete it. I don’t intend to pick on Spector here – he’s not alone in having swung so much against hits like the one Torres threw on Hossa. The fact of the matter is, what’s acceptable in hockey is changing and it’s made a bit more complicated by the fact that the role of hitting has changed over the years. Whereas it used to be about separating players from the puck, it’s become de rigeur to put hit a guy even once he’s released the puck. The longer a guy has to be worry about getting drilled after losing the puck, the more likely his attention will waver and the more likely he’ll get caught by someone who made a bad decision.
As far as I can tell, nobody can say that the hit on Hossa was anything more than a hockey play that he botched. Like screwing up his timing on a shot, only with a guy leaving the ice on a stretcher. You can say he jumped – he did come off the ice – but if Hossa’s a step closer, Torres drives up through his chest with his legs, which is sort of the textbook way to hit these days. It’s funny – I’m not sure the whole “Are his feet on the ice?” standard even makes any sense. I’m not a physicist but it seems unlikely to me that there’s much difference between driving through a guy with your legs and jumping – driving through a guy with your legs is just a jump that ran into something. One’s legal, the other isn’t.
Whatever you might say about Torres, he doesn’t have the track record of a guy like Matt Cooke. He doesn’t have a rap sheet full of nasty elbows, cross checks to the face, knee on knee hits or dangerous hits from behind. Spector says he’s predatory and, in a sense, I suppose he is. He’s close enough to the edge though that on basically all of the plays that people condemn (Ference was an exception), you can say it’s a hockey play gone wrong. Some of them, like the Eberle hit, are still difficult to understand (at the very least, the elbowing major was incomprehensible). Whether it’s Torres or someone else, as long as the line is drawn where it currently is, a guy who makes what can reasonably be seen as a mistake in judgment is going to result in guys getting absolutely destroyed.
In other words, Torres isn’t really the problem. The problem, to the extent that there is one, is a system of rules that renders guys fair game for a long time after they get rid of the puck. The problem is a mishmash rule about when you can hit a guy in the head. As long as hits like the Torres hit can be within a step of being legal, guys are going to miss their assessment of the line and cross it. When you draw these lines, you have to allow for some user error – it’s a fast game. Drawing the lines where the NHL has drawn them, you’re just begging for incidents like Torres on Hossa. The easy thing to do afterwards is to pretend that Torres is a really dirty player and that he always has been.
That doesn’t make it the truth and, if it’s not the truth, suspending Torres for ten games doesn’t really do anything to address the problem. Listing his history of hits that are over the line misleads, because, as Spector used to know, those hits were clean hockey hits for a long time. If you’re worked up about the Hossa hit and don’t acknowledge that the line being drawn where it is practically begs for guys to miss the line like Torres did, well, I don’t think you’re serious about solving the problem. You want the morality of being outraged while still getting the rush of watching all the awesome hits that fall on just the right side of the line (or that involve a star, or where the hittee doesn’t get hurt and we pretend it wasn’t as bad as the Torres hit).
The world does not, I would suggest, work that way. As long as you have a line, you’re going to have people who, in good faith, miss it. Condemning them for doing that might result in a pleasing sense of moral goodness, but it’s not a serious way to eliminate these sorts of incident in the future
in summary ... "Torres' has always played on the edge; is it his fault that hockey is redefining where the edge should be?"
interesting read Cost of a big hit | mc79hockey.com ... good comments section too - i still think his continued repeated stupidity needs to be punished severely
I initially had a whole thing written about Torres, offering some defence of him. I decided to delete it. I don’t intend to pick on Spector here – he’s not alone in having swung so much against hits like the one Torres threw on Hossa. The fact of the matter is, what’s acceptable in hockey is changing and it’s made a bit more complicated by the fact that the role of hitting has changed over the years. Whereas it used to be about separating players from the puck, it’s become de rigeur to put hit a guy even once he’s released the puck. The longer a guy has to be worry about getting drilled after losing the puck, the more likely his attention will waver and the more likely he’ll get caught by someone who made a bad decision.
As far as I can tell, nobody can say that the hit on Hossa was anything more than a hockey play that he botched. Like screwing up his timing on a shot, only with a guy leaving the ice on a stretcher. You can say he jumped – he did come off the ice – but if Hossa’s a step closer, Torres drives up through his chest with his legs, which is sort of the textbook way to hit these days. It’s funny – I’m not sure the whole “Are his feet on the ice?” standard even makes any sense. I’m not a physicist but it seems unlikely to me that there’s much difference between driving through a guy with your legs and jumping – driving through a guy with your legs is just a jump that ran into something. One’s legal, the other isn’t.
Whatever you might say about Torres, he doesn’t have the track record of a guy like Matt Cooke. He doesn’t have a rap sheet full of nasty elbows, cross checks to the face, knee on knee hits or dangerous hits from behind. Spector says he’s predatory and, in a sense, I suppose he is. He’s close enough to the edge though that on basically all of the plays that people condemn (Ference was an exception), you can say it’s a hockey play gone wrong. Some of them, like the Eberle hit, are still difficult to understand (at the very least, the elbowing major was incomprehensible). Whether it’s Torres or someone else, as long as the line is drawn where it currently is, a guy who makes what can reasonably be seen as a mistake in judgment is going to result in guys getting absolutely destroyed.
In other words, Torres isn’t really the problem. The problem, to the extent that there is one, is a system of rules that renders guys fair game for a long time after they get rid of the puck. The problem is a mishmash rule about when you can hit a guy in the head. As long as hits like the Torres hit can be within a step of being legal, guys are going to miss their assessment of the line and cross it. When you draw these lines, you have to allow for some user error – it’s a fast game. Drawing the lines where the NHL has drawn them, you’re just begging for incidents like Torres on Hossa. The easy thing to do afterwards is to pretend that Torres is a really dirty player and that he always has been.
That doesn’t make it the truth and, if it’s not the truth, suspending Torres for ten games doesn’t really do anything to address the problem. Listing his history of hits that are over the line misleads, because, as Spector used to know, those hits were clean hockey hits for a long time. If you’re worked up about the Hossa hit and don’t acknowledge that the line being drawn where it is practically begs for guys to miss the line like Torres did, well, I don’t think you’re serious about solving the problem. You want the morality of being outraged while still getting the rush of watching all the awesome hits that fall on just the right side of the line (or that involve a star, or where the hittee doesn’t get hurt and we pretend it wasn’t as bad as the Torres hit).
The world does not, I would suggest, work that way. As long as you have a line, you’re going to have people who, in good faith, miss it. Condemning them for doing that might result in a pleasing sense of moral goodness, but it’s not a serious way to eliminate these sorts of incident in the future
