Laying Down The Law

Posted on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 11:15 am

We all saw the elite league hand down some serious suspensions this week to Brad Voth and Rick Kozak. I saw on the forums that many if not most of the fans were complaining that these suspensions were far too harsh and I have to tell you from someone on the inside, these suspensions are well deserved. I don’t know what tape all of you saw, but I saw the clips from every angle possible and they were bad.

First of all, let’s talk about Brad Voth. Here is a player that every team would love to have but Gerad Adams is far too smart to let his most marketable guy and probably his most important player go. I love watching him play when he plays honest. He doesn’t need to throw elbows, or run guys after the play, he causes enough damage without doing all that. When he plays honest, there isn’t a more effective guy in the league. Here is a player that will dump the puck in, go run the defencemen, come out in front of the net and score a nice goal. When you see him at his best, you wonder what he is doing in this league and why he isn’t playing back home for at least an NHL farm team.

So when he does something over the top, he deserves to be punished. Some might say there are different rules for Voth and everyone else and he seems to be punished more than others, well figure it out.

My one run in with Voth was three years ago when he ran George Awada from behind and George was laying on the ice. I was the nearest player and I did what any good teammate would do and I dropped my stick and gloves and went into grab a hold of Voth. Let’s be honest, I had every intention of getting my ass kicked by him, I’m no idiot, but still that’s what you do when you are a team, it’s better to take a beating for a teammate than to skate by him and leave your captain and buddy laying on the ice.

So I drop my stick and gloves (I know I keep saying that) and go at Voth, the man who towers above me, and the guy who is supposed to be one of the toughest guys in the league. What does he do? He doesn’t drop his gloves and beat me up, like he should have, he cross-checks me right in the face with all the force that a 6’5” tough guy can get behind a cross check to the face. I lose 4 teeth and get 10 stitches, he gets a one game (I think) suspension. One game? He should have gotten ten for that, and not just because it was me but because he could have permanently injured me.

This is one story and I’m sure every team has a few of these related to Voth. So does the Elite League have more severe punishment for Voth? Yes, and they definitely should. That hit on Ashley Tait last year was bad, but could have been worse. Voth knows he’s big and strong, so maybe once in a while, he should realize that if he runs a guy after the play or throws an elbow, its going to be a lot worse than if a 5’10 finesse player does it. When he went after Dagenais on Sunday, he had every intention of trying to hurt him. He threw a big elbow and luckily missed, but he bounced off the boards with such force that had he connected, Randy might not be playing hockey or seeing straight for the rest of this season or even worse. Then he chases him down and takes a baseball swing at the back of his legs then jumps him and starts pounding on him. All I can say is that I’m glad Dagenais finally got turned around and was strong enough to hold on and protect himself. So is that a tough guy? Intent to injure, a slash from behind and then jumping him, a sucker punch and then a fight? Maybe 12 games will give Voth a chance to realize that he is one of the best players in the league, one of the toughest and doesn’t need to be the dirtiest player in the league to be effective. He can hit guys legally and still do the damage and be the force and the game breaker for the Devils that he has always been. If he keeps playing the way he does right now, he is going to end more than a career. Talk to that poor kid in Sheffield that he hit at the playoffs a few years back. Ironically had Voth been suspended for the cross check to the face he gave me just before the playoff weekend, he wouldn’t have been playing in that game, but he was playing and that kid had a traumatic head injury and hasn’t been the same since that Voth hit.

Now to Kozak, I don’t know the guy, but seeing someone sucker punch a player in the back of the head when he is already on the ice is sick. To then skate through the blood on the ice is just plain disgusting. I was never a fighter, so I can’t claim to understand the mentality but I played with enough guys that played tough and were a hell of a lot tougher than the players in this league nowadays that had the honour and respect for fellow hockey players to not do that kind of thing. There has always been some sort of code between tough guys, because you never know when you are going to be on the other end of a similar situation. It’s when that code is thrown out the window that the league has to worry and the suspensions they handed out will hopefully remind these players what honour, respect and ‘toughness’ really mean.

We all like to see the tough guys go at it, and yes it’s part of the sport, but that crap I saw on the weekend shouldn’t be. The league has to protect the players and the suspensions they handed out are a step in the right direction.

Todd Kelman
General Manager