Only 25?

Well, the NHL has handed down it's sentence to Jesse Boulerice and it is a rather predictable 25 games.

Why is this predictable?

Well it is what Chris Simon got for his stick swinging last year and with teammate Steve Downie already serving a 20 gamer, I guess you could say that Downie reset the counter to zero for everybody.

But if you ask me, Boulerice deserved at least 30 if not more because of his past. Quite frankly I also think it is high time that these Head Coaches and franchises start getting penalized for this nonsense as well. Coaches would rethink their tactics if they knew they were facing suspensions as well if a player "reacted badly." We've seen the end of the bench clearing brawl because not only does the first player off the bench get 10 games, the head coach is slapped with a 3 game suspension as well.

And while a franchise like the Philadelphia Flyers can afford it, hitting franchises with huge fines will also increase the pressure to end this nonsense. It is bad enough that the NHL only makes headlines when somebody "reacts badly" but how much longer will it be before people stop paying attention to even the outrageous incidents such as this out of the NHL?

And to think, the Ultimate Fighting on Ice Fans love this kind of stuff. Sure, they condemn it with the rest of us, but they insist that more fighting will "clean this up" and that these ugly incidents have nothing whatsoever to do with fighting (except of course, fighting preventing them in the first place). Besides, if there aren't cheapshot artists running around taking cheapshots, then there's nobody for the "enforcers" to beat up on.

Simply put, we've tried it this way and it has failed. Nobody wants to see somebody get killed, yet that is exactly where we are heading unless the NHL gets serious about this.