I am Begging the NHL to Take Player Safety Seriously For Once

Last night, Arber Xhekaj caught Tim Stützle with a late, deliberate hit to the head:

To add insult to injury, the hit, in which, again, Xhekaj comes late, from the blindside, and is clearly targeting Stützle's head, caused the young German's stick to ride up into his own face. The Sens' top centre suffered a cut to go along with the head trauama. For his troubles, Xhekaj was assessed a major penalty and kicked out of the match. After the game, Sens coach Travis Green would only say that Stützle would be evaluated on Wednesday (along with Brady Tkachuk and Thomas Chabot, but that's a depressing story for another day).

This isn't the first time that I've written a piece in this vein, and it probably won't be the last, but I am begging the NHL to take Player Safety seriously for once in their lives and suspend the-ever-loving shit out of Xhekaj. There is nothing, repeat nothing, that deters scummy players like him short of large suspensions. You may recall that the league declined to do just that when the Habs' defender jumped Cedric Pare on Saturday night:

I'm not the first person to yell about this, but I'm having a hard time thinking of a clearer example of the consequences of non-enforcement against serial offenders like Xhekaj. In the above game against the Toronto Maple Leafs, Xhekaj was attempting to "avenge" Patrik Laine. In last night's affair, Xhekaj may not have been directly targeting Ridly Greig for his hit on Kirby Dach but it was a pretty classic example of a retaliation hit. "You got one of ours, we'll get one of yours". When he's being implicitly told that he can get away with that type of retaliation because of the jarring lack of consequences, we shouldn't then be surprised that he acted out again.

Here's the thing: Xhekaj, even on a bad team like the Montreal Canadiens, is a marginal NHLer. The 23 year-old split time last season between the NHL club and the AHL's Laval Rocket. Maybe he'll turn out to be a player in the long run but for now he's fighting to secure a full-time spot in the league. If he's a middling contributor, he's going to try to find other ways to make himself valuable. I don't particularly like that Xhejak's brand of petty, violent "revenge" has a place in NHL team building, but I'd be ignoring the facts on the ground if I said it doesn't hold sway in some corners. If the league is serious about player safety, and I'm often convinced that they aren't, then they need to make it so that it is hugely punitive to deliberately attempt to injure another player – especially as a pre-mediated retaliatory act, which both of Xhekaj's recent transgressions clearly were.

I'm not breaking new ground in calling for changes to the NHL's Department of Player Safety, but it's a call that I'm going to have to keep on making as long as the league's got its priorities mixed up on the subject. What's more important: the ability of a third pairing nobody to injure opponents virtually unimpeded, or the health of one of your league's budding süperstars?

Your choice, NHL!