You're Kidding Right?

Lots of talk yesterday about A.O.'s ejection and suspension in the World Championships. And despite unprecedented coverage of the event from the Caps (and tip-toeing on the line of "conflict of interest" in the process) J.P. is the only one with a video clip (I'd put here myself but I can't get YouTube to cooperate with me anymore). Kudos to J.P.

So now taking a look at a what really happened on the ice and ignoring the AP's misinformation, we see that the hit A. Wasn't "from behind" or a "head shot" at all and B. Legal (last time I checked, you were allowed to hit the player with the puck even in European hockey). Just because the other player had his head down doesn't make it dirty. Keep your head up and those things won't happen to you.

But what is done is done and there's nothing that can be done about it. However a great player's reputation is being sullied and for what reason? I'm not saying that A.O. did nothing wrong because it is A.O. He did nothing wrong and is being severely punished, period. Without a doubt hockey needs to be cleaned up, but we need to get rid of the cheap dirty stuff and leave the clean stuff alone. There's no sense in throwing the baby out with the bathwater and that's exactly what happened here.