There was a surprising trade in the NHL on Dec. 9 when the Carolina Hurricanes sent defenseman Tomas Kaberle over to the Montreal Canadiens in return for fellow Czech Republic defenseman Jaroslav Spacek. The deal came as a bit of a shock to many fans and Kaberle himself since he was signed by Carolina as a free agent just a few months ago. Kaberle was in the first year of a three-year $12.75 million deal.

The 33-year-old defenseman was traded from the Toronto Maple Leafs to the Boston Bruins late last season and helped Boston win the Stanley Cup. However, he left the Bruins to sign with Carolina during the off season. He admittedly struggled so far this year and has nine assists in 29 games along with a -12 rating.

Carolina general manager Jim Rutherford publicly stated that he wasn’t happy with the way Kaberle was playing and said he needed to pick his game up if he wanted to stay with the club. Rutherford was sure Kaberle could help the club and he traded defenseman Joe Corvo to Boston after signing him. Rutherford said Kaberle didn’t come to training camp in good shape because he won the cup with Boston and celebrated most of the summer.

The Hurricanes struggled out of the gate though and coach Paul Maurice was fired about 25 games into the season and replaced with Kirk Muller. Kaberle started to play better after Rutherford’s statements and recorded four assists in his last two games with Carolina.

The 37-year-old Spacek has played in just 12 games this season and has recorded three assists along with a plus-two rating. However, he’s been out of action since Nov. 12 with an undisclosed upper-body injury. He’s also in the last year of his contract which sees him earn $3.8 million year.

Kaberle spent his first 11 and a half years in the league with Toronto before being traded to the Bruins for center Joe Colborne, a 2011 first-round draft pick and a second round selection in 2012. He was originally drafted in the eighth round in 1996 and widely regarded as Toronto’s best defenseman during his time with the Leafs.

At the time of the trade, Kaberle had played 931 regular season games and had scored 84 goals and 454 assists for 538 points along with 39 points in 102 playoff games. Spacek was drafted in the fifth round in 1998 by the Florida Panthers. In 846 regular season games with Florida, the Chicago Blackhawks, Columbus Blue Jackets, Edmonton Oilers, Buffalo Sabres, and Canadiens he has a total of 77 goals and 266 assists for 343 points. He also has 18 points in 61 playoff contests.

Former Washington Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau found himself on the unemployment line on the morning of Nov. 28 when the club let him go. However, he was already back at work by the evening of Nov. 30 when the Anaheim Ducks fired Randy Carlyle and hired Boudreau to coach their struggling team.

The timing was a little odd since the Ducks broke a seven-game winless streak by beating the Montreal Canadiens 4-1 just before giving Carlyle the boot, but they wanted to sew up Boudreau before he signed with somebody else. Boudreau becomes just the seventh person to coach two NHL teams in the same season.

Carlyle was originally drafted by the Toronto Maple Leafs in the second round back in 1976. He was traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins just two years later and was named the league’s best defenseman in 1981 after scoring a total of 83 points on 16 goals and 67 assists in 76 games. He was traded to the Winnipeg Jets during the 1983/84 season and retired there in 1993 with 647 points in 1,055 games. He managed 148 goals and 499 assists during his career and served 1,400 minutes in penalties.

Carlyle started his coaching career in 1996 in the International Hockey League (IHL) when he took over the Manitoba Moose. He also became the club’s general manager and president in later years. He progressed to the NHL as an assistant coach with Washington in 2001/02 and returned to Manitoba in 2004 as their coach. He was hired by Anaheim as head coach in 2005 and led the team to the Stanley Cup championship in 2006-07. Carlyle leaves the franchise with the most coaching wins in its history. His record with the club was 273-182-61.

The Ducks basically cleaned house when they let Carlyle go since assistant coaches Mike Foligno and Dave Farrish were also fired along with Joe Trotta, the team’s video coordinator. Brad Lauer was hired along with Boudreau as an assistant coach and another assistant will be hired in the near future. Bob Murray, Anaheim’s general manager and executive vice president, said it was hard letting Carlyle go since he’s a fantastic coach, but felt the team needed a new voice in the dressing room and Boudreau has proved he’s a winner over the years.

At the time of the firing, The Ducks had a 7-13-4 record and were 29^th out of 30 teams in the overall standings and also second last in the Western Conference. The 56-year-old Boudreau had a career record of 201-88-40 with Washington when he was fired and was the fastest coach to reach 200 wins in modern NHL history. He was named the NHL’s coach of the year in 2007-08 and led Washington to the Presidents’ Trophy in 2009/10 as the league’s regular-season champions.

Washington also won the Southeast Division a total of four times with Boudreau behind the bench. Before taking the Capitals job he had spent nine years coaching in the American Hockey League (AHL) and won a championship with the Hershey Bears in the 2005/06 season.

Like Carlyle, Boudreau also played with the Maple Leafs before he was traded to the Chicago Blackhawks. He scored 28 goals 42 assists for 70 points in 141 career NHL games. However, in the AHL, he scored 316 goals and 483 assists for 799 points. He was the AHL’s top scorer in 1987/88 and no other AHL player scored more points than him in the 1980s.

When a team’s coach doesn’t get along with its star player somebody usually has to go. More often than not it’s the coach. Bruce Boudreau of the NHL’s Washington Capitals found this out firsthand on Nov. 27 when he was let go by the club and replaced by former Capitals player Dale Hunter a day later.

Washington’s general manager George McPhee said he had hoped that his club’s former captain would return to the team someday, but added that it was also hard letting Boudreau go. However, Boudreau and some of the club’s best players including Russian stars Alexander Ovechkin and Alexander Semin weren’t seeing eye to eye lately and the team was suffering due to it.

Hunter was coaching the London Knights in the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) when McPhee offered him the job and he quickly accepted. He now becomes the franchise’s 15^th head coach since they joined the league in 1945/75

Washington stormed out of the gate when the puck was dropped to open the current NHL season and won its first seven games, but they hit the skids and have now lost 10 out of their last 15 contests. They were sitting in second place in the Southeast Division and in the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference when the announcement was made with 25 points and a record of 12-9-1.

Hunter, who played 19 seasons in the NHL, said he feels like part of the team already since he spent so many years in Washington and has a lot of good memories of playing there. He played a total of 872 games for team between 1987 and 1990 and scored 181 goals and 375 assists for 556 points. Hunter is in fourth place in club history for games played and ninth in goals scored. However, when it comes to penalty minutes he’s the all-time franchise leader with 2,003.

Hunter admitted that playing is a lot more fun than working behind the bench because it’s a tough job trying to deal with 23 unique personalities and get them all on the same page. He did an excellent job of it at the junior level though and was named the Coach of the Year in the OHL three times. He also led London to a Memorial Cup victory in 2005. His junior coaching record stands at 451-189-23-24 and his .691 winning percentage is a league record for coaches who have won 200 or more games.

Boudreau, also a former NHL player, had some successful seasons with the Capitals, but always fell short once the playoffs came around. He joined the team in 2007/08 and led it to the Southeast Division title in his first four seasons as well as three 100-point campaigns and franchise records 121 points and 54 wins. He also led the team to its first ever Presidents’ Trophy, which is awarded to the team with the most points in the regular season. He also reached 200 wins faster than any other coach in modern NHL history and has an overall record of 201-88-40.

Paul Maurice was fired by the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes for the second time on Nov. 28 and has been replaced by former six-time all-star Kirk Muller, who enjoyed a 19-year career with the New Jersey Devils, Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs, New York Islanders, Dallas Stars, and Florida Panthers. This will be Muller’s first crack at coaching an NHL team. He was on the coaching staff of the Canadiens for five years and was the current coach of the Milwaukee Admirals of the AHL when Carolina hired him.

The Hurricanes were sitting in second-last place in the Eastern Conference at the time of the announcement with a record of 8-13-4, good for 20 points. The team has also lost 10 out of its past 13 contests and has only made the postseason once since 2006. However, the club is only five points out of a playoff spot and general manager Jim Rutherford decided to make a move now before it was too late and while they’re still within striking distance of a postseason spot.

Rutherford said the 45-year-old Muller’s a proven motivator and leader with superb communication skills and the club’s confident that he can turn it fortunes around in the near future. Maurice had some company though as the Washington Capitals also changed head coaches on Nov. 28 when Bruce Boudreau was let go. He will be replaced by Dale Hunter, who was the head coach of the London Knights OHL junior team. Since last spring, four out of the five teams in the Southeast Division have now replaced their coaches.

Muller scored 357 goals and added 602 assists for 959 points in 1349 regular season games and added 33 goals and 36 assists in 127 playoff contests. He was the second-overall selection in the 1984 draft and won the Stanley Cup with Montreal in 1993. He retired as a member of the Dallas Stars after the 2002/03 season. Muller’s first job with the Hurricanes will be to try and cut down on their goals against as their goals-against-average of 3.24 ranks 28^th in the 30-team league. He also needs to revive the powerplay which is scoring on just 12.2 per cent of their opportunities and is one of the worst in the league.

The 44-year-old Maurice was hired the first time by the Hurricanes in 1995/96 when the franchise was known as the Hartford Whalers. He spent nine seasons there and missed the playoffs the first three years and five times altogether. He took the team to the Stanley Cup final in 2001/02, but lost and was then fired during the 2003/04 season.

Maurice was then hired by the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2006/07 and missed the playoffs two years running before he was fired. He rejoined Carolina in 2008/09 and lost in the conference finals before missing the playoffs the next two seasons.

He’s made the playoffs just four times in 14 NHL seasons. His overall record with Carolina was 384-391-145 with his career record being 460-457-167. However, Maurice does hold Carolina’s coaching record of 25 playoff wins. The club failed to make the postseason last year when they lost at home in the final game of the season to Tampa Bay.

Georges Laraque, a former NHL tough guy who spent a dozen years in the world’s best hockey league with the Montreal Canadiens, Edmonton Oilers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Phoenix Coyotes, recently said it has a steroid problem. Laraque spent his 12 years fighting the league’s other “goons” or tough guys as well as his own personal battle against performance-enhancing drugs. He has come out in the open with his personal story and other details in his autobiography called “The Story of the NHL’s Unlikeliest Tough Guy.”

He said that many of the NHL’s fighters used performance-enhancing drugs when he broke into the league and he asked the NHL Players’ Association if they could take any action against it. He said players would take the drugs to become physically bigger and so they wouldn’t feel as much pain during on-ice fights.

Laraque said his job was hard enough as it was, but things were even tougher when he had to fight against guys that were juiced up and bulked up on steroids. He said the NHLPA listened to what he had to say about the problem, but didn’t do anything about it at that point due to political reasons. He said the association wanted to keep mandatory drug testing out of their collective bargaining with the NHL.

The 34-year-old Laraque definitely has the experience to be taken seriously since he fought a total of 131 times during regular season games and served 1,126 minutes in penalties. He said some of the league’s enforcers used illegal drugs as a way to numb their pain. He added that it was easy to tell who was using them because the signs were quite recognizable.

He said that it wasn’t just steroids that were being taken as other drugs were also going around. He said he was clean and fighting against drug users was very dangerous for all of the fighters who didn’t take illegal substances. Laraque said a drug like ephedrine would basically desensitize a player during a game and he wouldn’t feel any physical pain. He said during warm-ups he would take a look at the other team’s tough guy and if he noticed that his eyes were bulging and his arms were trembling then he was on something to numb the pain.

He said fighters usually cover their faces with a coat of Vaseline the same way boxers do so the punches will hopefully slide off their faces. But Laraque said it wasn’t just the tough guys that were taking performance-enhancing drugs. He said some of the league’s top-skilled players also took them, but he wouldn’t mention any names. He said you could tell who used them because every four years they’d suffer a weight and efficiency loss, since the Olympics were held every four years.

He said this is because players would stop taking the drugs before the Olympics because of the strict testing policies and would then start up again when the Games were over and they’d gain weight and start playing better. Laraque feels that most of the players knew who was taking drugs, but nobody would break the code of silence about it. He feels the league must continue fighting against the use of illegal drugs and be more proactive, especially since several former enforcers have died in the past few years.

Laraque said the NHL introduced a clear-cut policy against illegal substances during his last few years in the league and noticed how quickly some players lost weight immediately after it was implemented.

NHL goaltenders have long been in the habit of wearing colorful and unique facemasks as a way to honor their heroes. This season, Canadian-born Jason La Barbera of the Phoenix Coyotes is wearing a mask which honors former NFL player Pat Tillman while Jaroslav Halak of the St. Louis Blues and Jimmy Howard of the Detroit Red Wings will be honoring former members of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl Russian hockey club.

Tillman was killed by friendly fire in 2007 while serving in the U.S Army while the Yaroslavl hockey team of the KHL perished in a plane crash on Sept. 7. LaBarbera has illustrated his love of rock music and wrestling over the past 10 years on his mask by featuring images of singer Eddie Vedder, rock band Metallica, and wrestlers such as Brett “The Hitman” Hart and the Undertaker.

However, the Coyotes backup netminder decided to honor Tillman this year because of the respect he holds for the former NFL player who left the sport to join the army after the terrorist attacks on America in 2011.

La Barbera said Tillman was a fascinating person because he gave up his career and the game he loved to do something that he felt was more important. He added that Tillman worked his whole life to make it to the NFL and just walked away from the fame and money to do what he thought was right. He said he wanted to pay tribute to Tillman, a person he n ever met, as well as all of the other members of the armed forces.

As a football player, Tillman was a favourite of fans when he played for Arizona State and then with the Cardinals of the NFL. After the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 he decided to leave his new wife and life behind to join the forces. He quickly became an icon, but sadly, his life was cut short when he was killed by his own troops during a fire fight in Afghanistan.

Since then, Tillman has been a huge influence and inspiration for many young people around the world. La Barbera said he’s heard so many good things about Tillman since moving to Arizona last year and he’s a person he looks up to be cause he shares some of the same values as the former NFL star.

LaBarbera decided to have his mask painted during the summer and discussed it with artist David Arrigo of Toronto Canada. The end result features a large picture of Tillman’s face wearing an Army Ranger. There are also images of him playing football as well as embracing his brother Kevin Tillman.

The right side of the mask features images of a military aircraft and a soldier and the front of it showcases a yellow ribbon in the middle which is surrounded by the team’s logo to one side of it and a paw print to the other side. The back of the helmet features red-and-white images of camouflage as well as maple leafs and stars.

However, LaBarbera didn’t stop there. He’s donating $420 to the Pat Tillman Foundation for every win he earns this NHL season. The foundation was launched by Tillmans’ widow, Marie. The money raised boy it is used to help support members of the military and their families. The Foundation and Marie Tillman thanked LaBarbera graciously for his donations and unique tribute.

Meanwhile, Blues’ goalie Jaroslav Halak has an image of former Slovakian teammate Pavol Demitra on his mask. Demitra was one of several former NHL players who died in the September plane crash. In all, 44 people died in the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl accident, including flight crew, players, coaches and staff. The Red Wings’ Howard is honouring Ruslan Salei, Brad McCrimmon, and Stefan Liv on the back of his mask. All three of them were members of the Detroit Red Wings family and had ties to Howard.

Josh Harding of the Minnesota Wild is honouring also honoring Demitra as well as ex-teammates Rick Rypien and Derek Boogaard, who both died this year. Harding also has an image of his grandmother on the mask.

Nobody really knows exactly what the NHL is looking for these days, including the league’s players. On one hand they’re being suspended left, right, and center for violent conduct and on the other the league’s promoting fist fights on its official website.

Brendan Shanahan, the NHL’s head of discipline, has even come under criticism from some general managers for being too hard on the players. However, the media and many fans are happy with the way he’s been using videos of illegal hits to explain why players have been suspended. At the same time, he’s also shown videos and explained why other hits are acceptable.

It’s been reported that a group of league general managers have even complained to Gary Bettman, the NHL commissioner. One of the GMs said they wanted to raise the bar when it comes to illegal hits to the head, but they didn’t want Shanahan to double or triple it. Some of the GMs are crying that head shots may be reduced, but all hitting will be too, as some players don’t want to risk suspensions in case they mis-time their hits.

When NHL players are suspended they have to forfeit their salaries, and many of them don’t want to put themselves in a position where this could possibly happen. But the whole point of getting tough with players who illegally hit their opponents is to stop them from doing it. Too many players have suffered brain injuries over the last couple of decades because of them and several of them have had to retire prematurely.

All Shanahan is doing is trying to do his job and drive that point home to the numerous goons in the league. The majority of the league’s GMs are behind him since they realize any rule change is going to take time to get used to. The problem with the NHL is they’ve allowed fighting in their game for way too long and now anytime a player gets leveled with a clean hit a fight breaks out because his teammates can’t accept it.

This is one of the reasons hitting in hockey might be declining. Players don’t want to get ambushed by two or three of their opponents every time they deliver a clean body check. If they can’t take the physical contact that comes with the sport then they should simply get out of it.

The league is also considering altering the equipment the players wear as a way to cut down on head injuries, especially the size of shoulder pads. Many players are suffering pretty serious injuries due to the sheer size and hardness of modern era shoulder pads. Much of today’s equipment is as hard as steel and that’s why seemingly innocent hits are resulting in head trauma.

But while the league is promoting clean body checking and sportsmanship it’s contradicting itself by showing and even promoting videos of fights on its official website. It apparent the NHL doesn’t want to get rid of fighting because it views it as a selling point. The general managers are happy with it because they’re not the ones taking punches to the face.

But there are still millions of Americans who consider professional hockey to be nothing more than bush league and legalized mayhem. And with the NHL itself sending out such mixed signals and not knowing which direction it wants to take, who can blame them.

The NHL returns to the Canadian city of Winnipeg, Manitoba this season 15 years after the league pulled the plug on the city’s original franchise. The Winnipeg Jets were reborn after the Atlanta Flames went belly up in Georgia and NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman figured he owed Winnipeg fans something.

Winnipeg fans have always wanted another NHL team and they got their wish after the franchise was simply losing too much money down in Atlanta. The official announcement of the league’s return to the mid-west city was made back on May 31 and after the preseason came to an end on Oct 1, the Jets are ready for action with a new logo but the same team name.

It could still all blow up in the NHL’s face even though13,000 season tickets were sold in four days after Bettman announced the moving of the franchise to Winnipeg. If the team doesn’t do well and the economy doesn’t pick up it could end up being a struggle to keep the franchise afloat.

However, while the relocation was big news in Canada, the club had to carry on as usual to prepare for the new season after a disappointing display last year. The club got off to a pretty decent start and looked well on its way to making the playoffs by the time the new year rolled around. They had a respectable record of 20-15-6 at the start of 2011, but then fell apart the rest of the way.

They missed the playoffs for the 11^th time in the last 12 years because they won only 14 of their last 41 games in the second half of the season. The club has had a busy summer trying to rectify the situation and several new people were brought on board. Kevin Cheveldayoff, formerly of the Chicago Blackhawks, was signed as the new general manager and Craig Heisinger was hired as his assistant.

Claude Noel will be the team’s new head coach, but he doesn’t have much experience at the NHL level. He did coach during the 2009/10 season when the Columbus Blue Jackets hired him on an interim basis. He earned a reputation as being an excellent teacher at the AHL level though and is going to be depended on to get through to the team’s younger players.

The team might get a boost by playing in front of boisterous crowds this season after playing to half-empty houses down in Atlanta. Winnipeg has the NHL’s smallest rink, so the fans will be pretty close to the action and could inspire their team’s performances.

The team still has to produce on the ice though if it’s going to succeed. There are some decent NHL forwards on the roster such as Andrew Ladd, Bryan Little, Nik Antropov, Evander Kane, Kyle Wellwood, and Blake Wheeler. But if this group doesn’t play up to its potential then goals are going to be hard to come by.

Their defensive corps isn’t too bad either with Ron Hainsey, Tobias Enstrom, Dustin Byfuglien, Randy Jones, Zach Bogosian, Johnny Oduya, and Mark Stuart lining up on the blue line. In net, they look to be pretty solid with Ondrej Pavelec and Chris Mason between the pipes.

The club’s first season in Winnipeg will be a crucial one and will go a long way in telling if it will be able to survive there. Another season like last could turn the fans off pretty quickly. If that happens, the homecoming might not last too long.

The puck drops on the new NHL season on Oct. 6

For the first time in 22 years the NHL will start its regular season without Mike Modano in the lineup for one of its 30 teams. Modano, a star forward for the Minnesota/Dallas Stars franchise, decided to call it quits just after NHL training camps got underway.

While Modano may not have been the most prolific scorer in history, he does leave the game as the highest-scoring American born player ever with a total of 1,374 points in 1,499 season games. He managed to score 561 goals throughout his career and added 813 assists. He added another 58 goals and 88 assists for 146 points in 176 playoff games.

The 41-year-old center decided to announce his retirement on his Facebook page by saying the time was right for him to say goodbye. Modano was originally drafted first overall way back in 1988 from the Prince Albert Raiders of the western Hockey League. He was the just the second American ever to be selected with the number one pick. Brian Lawton was the first in 1983.

Modano was drafted by the Minnesota Stars and he made his NHL debut in the playoffs during 1988/89 when he played two games. He played four more seasons in Minnesota before the Stars relocated to Dallas in 1993 where he enjoyed 16 more seasons. He scored 50 goals in the 1993/94 campaign and managed to hit the back of the net at least 30 times on nine occasions.

Overall, Modano ranks number 22 on the list of NHL all-time scorers in points and number 23 in goals. He led the Stars to the Stanley Cup championship in 1998/99 and to the final the following year. He took home a gold medal in 1996 as a member of the winning American team in the World Cup of Hockey and earned a silver medal at the Olympic Games in 2002.

Modano left the Stars at the end of the 2009/10 season and signed a one-year deal with the Detroit Red Wings. However, he missed just over half of the season due to a severed tendon in his right wrist. He said when last season came to an end in Detroit he realized that he was finished as a player. He said he didn’t receive any offers in the summer, but the Vancouver Canucks asked him to try out before training camp started.

However, he turned the invitation down because he wasn’t skating during the offseason and said he wasn’t really motivated. He didn’t feel quite right about retiring from the league as a Red Wing though. The Stars helped him out in that respect by signing him to a one-day contract so he could officially announce his retirement as a member of the Dallas organization.

The Michigan native plans to stay in the game and will do some broadcasting work with the NHL Network as well as FoxSports Southwest, where he’ll work some Stars games. He said he’d love to work for the Stars franchise once their ownership situation becomes clearer. The club is currently up for sale.

While Modano will definitely miss hockey, the fans will also miss him. He was known as a clean, classy player with plenty of speed and an excellent shot. He had a huge impact on the sport in America and will go down as one of that country’s greatest players. Expect to see Modano inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in the future.

After the league’s marquee player Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins missed the second half of last season due to a concussion he received from a hit to the head, the NHL started to crack down on illegal hits.

And by the looks of things they’re getting even tougher this season with Brendan Shanahan, the leagues’ senior vice president of player safety and hockey operations, handing out five suspensions already in preseason games for a total of 17 games with two of the suspensions being classified as indefinite.

Jody Shelley of the Philadelphia Flyers was handed a 10-game suspension for hitting Darryl Boyce of the Toronto Maple Leafs from behind. Boyce’s face was slammed into the glass behind the net and he broke his nose. Shelley is a repeat offender as he was suspended twice last year and Shanahan said that’s why he received a lengthy suspension as he hasn’t learned his lesson.

Shanahan has taken a brand new approach when handing out suspensions by releasing videos of the illegal hits to the press and then commenting on them on camera, explaining exactly what rules the players have broken in the incidents.

The players don’t really have anybody to blame but themselves if they find themselves suspended without pay since Shanahan and Mathieu Schneider, an NHLPA special advisor, released a video to all of the clubs before the preseason got underway which visually explained the changes to the rules where boarding and head shots are concerned.

The 10-minute video was filmed and produced by the NHL and shows examples of the types of hits that aren’t allowed. The league felt a hard example should be shown to the 30 teams since there have been some changes to the rules over the summer months.

The league altered rule 48 and any hit that targets the head intentionally or recklessly will result in a minor penalty and a review by the league. It’s up to the referee to decide if the recipient of the hit put himself into a vulnerable position just before being hit.

The rule used to allow referees to hand out a five-minute major penalty if a player was hit from the side or behind. The referee can now hand out a penalty if a player is hit head on to the head. The video that was sent out featured four examples of illegal checks and four examples of legal hits, explaining the difference between them. Basically, any body check that mains primary contact with an opponent’s head will result in a penalty and a disciplinary review.

When it comes to rule 41, which deals with the offense of boarding, it has been amended in a few ways. The new rule will penalize players for pushing or checking defenceless players into the boards, resulting in dangerous or violent impacts with the boards. The old version of the rule didn’t penalize players for pushing opponents into the boards.

This means the player who is delivering the body check must make sure the recipient isn’t in a defenceless position. If the player is, then the attacker must avoid the collision or minimize his contact. It’ll be up to the referees to decide if the contact was unavoidable.

The new rule means that it doesn’t matter how hard the contact between the two players is, what matters is how hard he hits the boards. Many players were simply getting pushed into the boards headfirst from behind and getting seriously injured.

It’ll take a while for the players to get it through their heads what constitutes a dangerous play, but the NHL is definitely on the right track. Simple pushes in the back can end a player’s career if they’re driven into the boards headfirst while unprepared. Look for the suspensions to continue throughout the season.