Cooke hit, GM meetings give NHL shot to protect players

Hockey Betting Lines

03/09/2010 - Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Here we go again.

The NHL has yet another chance to address the issue of blows to the head, and while it's never a good thing when a questionable hit brings the topic into the limelight, the latest infraction may been perfectly timed to affect change.

On Sunday, Pittsburgh's Matt Cooke leveled Boston Bruins star Marc Savard with a blind side hit to the head. Like several hits we've seen this year, it was vicious, and it once again brought to the forefront the debate on whether something needs to be done to better protect players.

Cooke's hit came just one day before the NHL's annual general manager meetings, putting even more pressure on the league to fix the problem. The GMs are currently gathered in Boca Raton and although it was already on the docket, the issue of head hits is really the only issue that matters now.

In short, they need to come up with some kind of an answer before the meetings conclude on Wednesday.

The league owes it players like Savard, who has been diagnosed with a Grade Two concussion as a result of the hit, to finally come up with something concrete that will in some way make players safer from head injuries. After all, Savard is a huge part of the Bruins' offense and may wind up missing the rest of the season because of Cooke's action.

Even Cooke's teammate, Sidney Crosby, seemed open to rule changes after Sunday's incident.

The Penguins captain and resident superstar said, "At some point there's got to be a clear indication from the league, because we've seen this so many times now."

And that's the most important thing for the NHL to come up with in Florida, some sort of "clear indication" as to what is illegal.

As of now, the NHL only considers it to be a dirty hit if an elbow is delivered to the head, and not if contact is made with a shoulder. All hits to the head have been banned in international play, and we didn't see anybody trying to cross that line during the Olympics, so maybe it could work in the NHL.

But what Crosby implied in his statement is what the NHL needs to come up with immediately -- a tangible rule change. It doesn't have to be a drastic change like the IIHF's zero tolerance policy on head hits. Not that we have to worry about that really, after all this is the NHL, which should never be confused with an organization receptive to big changes.

But, under the current NHL rules, the Cooke hit did not even draw a penalty, despite the fact that it caught a player from the blind side and was also delivered well after Savard released the puck. The officials apparently didn't think it was late and they saw that it was a shoulder hit so they let Cooke skate by without a penalty.

Yet when you watch the video, and see Savard lying unconscious on the ice, can you really feel that Cooke did nothing wrong? Is it possible that the GMs could watch that replay over and over and think that the rules of the game, as they are now, are sufficient to protect players?

A possible solution that is being kicked around in the blogoshpere is the banning of blind-side hits by the NHL. That would certainly draw a line against at least one type of dangerous hits.

After all, Savard wasn't irresponsibly skating with his head down, he was simply in the act of shooting when he was obliterated by a player he couldn't possibly have seen. Hardly seems fair.

A zero tolerance policy on blind-side hits, if enforced, would be a good starting point and would prove to the NHL Players Association that the league is serious about protecting its players.

The NHLPA has been way ahead of the league in identifying hits to the head as a major problem. Why wouldn't they be...the NHLPA has seen over 200 concussions reported by players over the last two and a half years and they have to answer to their members when it comes to medical coverage.

As far as Cooke's suspension, the penalty of games should reach double-digits, but as usual, the NHL brass will most likely fall short of expectations. Colin Campbell, the NHL director of hockey operations and the man in charge of suspensions, has routinely shown a lack of interest in making examples of players.

The league even failed to give Philadelphia's Mike Richards a single game for his notorious hit on Florida's David Booth earlier this season. That wasn't officially Campbell's decision, since he recused himself from ruling on the incident because his son Gregory plays for the Panthers, but clearly his underlings were just following the precedent the director has set time and time again.

Oh yeah, about the Richards hit, it occurred on October 24 and Booth didn't see action in another game until January 31. Not that the league knew Booth would miss over three months due to his concussion, but looking back, it seems impossible that Richards didn't have to sit out a single game for his head hit.

Missing the boat with Richards is just another reason why the NHL needs to seize their moment in Boca Raton. If they won't stand up for the players now, it seems unlikely that they ever will.

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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.

Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"

A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."

Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.

In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.

"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."

Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.

But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"

Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.

This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.

Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.

In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.

No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.

And that's all any bettor can ask for.

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