Weber Fined $2500 For Hit, Not Suspended

[pimpcurtly]

^^^^^ MAK, brilliant work again! Great end to that vid!!

[The Brahma Bull]

makaveli FTW. AGAIN.

[Stark]

Torts got fined for swearing in his interview, that's a big no no, not for trashing Malkin and Crosby.

[DownUndaCanuck]

Bitz gets 2 games for a hit in the numbers - Clifford's collar bone goes into the boards before his head does.

Weber first gives Zetterberg a gloved punch to the back of the head, then rams his head into the boards and he gets nothing.

The TSN panel said Weber earns around $2500 for 1 shift played.

This league has just lost whatever final shreds of integrity it just had. What Weber did isn't very different to Bertuzzi's gloved punch on Moore and he was inches away from paralyzing Zetterberg and changing the present and future of the entire Detroit Red Wings organization. And that just costs him $2500?

If we play Nashville I want Byron Bitz to grab Weber's unsheilded face and slam it down onto the ice. Concuss this mofo and give him what he deserves, because the league isn't policing dirty plays like this and a dirty hit back is the only way these guys will take notice.

The justice in this league is a disgrace and could very easily be exploited. Oh wait, it already has, and the Bruins won a cup by doing so.

[Edler0023]

Makaveli

[imacanuck]

Barry Trotz is happy with Shanahan's decision, turn the tables he would be singing a different tune. He should be fined for such obvious brown nosing...

"Shea's a big part of our team,'' Nashville coach Barry Trotz said. ''The league does a great job all the time of the reviewing. Nothing gets by them anymore.''

[The Dark Canuck]

What a joke.

Looks like Bitz should have stopped short before hitting Clifford and then gabbed his head to ram it directly into the glass instead. Would have gotten off with a lighter sentence.

[Gollumpus]

A hypothetical question I posted on a different thread:

Bitz gets two games and Weber has to pay a $2,500 fine for their offences.

Sidney Crosby hits a guy who is in a vulnerable position, and that player gets a concussion as a result of this hit. So, with the NHL sliding scale of punishment to player stardom in mind, does the NHL award Crosby $2,500 or does the guy Crosby hit get a 2 game suspension?

regards,

G.

[Niloc009]

Maximum per CBA

[key2thecup]

Shea Weber should have been suspended for Henrik Zetterberg hit

So, let’s see if we’ve got this straight … (Stone Cold) Shea Weber slams goody-two-shoes Henrik Zetterberg’s head into the turnbuckle at Bridgestone Arena, with Gary (Vince McMahon) Bettman perched right there at ringside, and is subsequently put to the lash by a fine that wouldn’t cover a decent bar tab at Tootsie’s?

That logic is as cracked as Zetterberg’s helmet is reported to have been.

Now for me or you or, say, a locally-produced CFL punter earning barely enough to keep the family cat in tins of Fancy Feast, $2,500 US would be a sizable hit.

For Shea Weber, uh, not so much. He rakes in a cool US$7.5-million a season to be a perennial Norris Trophy candidate, one of the hockey’s most complete defencemen. Gifted. Nasty. Feared.

But US$2,500 happens to be the maximum fine allowed by the current collective bargaining agreement — which, of course, is so utterly ludicrous for professional athletes pulling in more than the GNP of some small countries.

But that’s just another squabble for the coming summer.

So the US$2,500 pittance, and what we can only assume was a stern, fatherly scolding from Shanny, is the extent of punishment.

So much for the loud huffing and practised postulating about a firm crackdown on head shots. Weber dips into petty cash and the Preds don’t miss their 30-minute-a-night defenceman for a second.

The folks in Nashville must be yukking it up louder than Minnie Pearl on laughing gas.

This was hardly a split-second reaction; one of those spur-of-the-moment incidents that enter a grey, hazy area of debate.

Intent was obvious.

A suspension in some form was warranted. Essential, even.

But, gosh, well, these are playoffs and gosh, well, Shea Weber is mighty important to the Preds and gosh, well, the league wouldn’t want to actually be accused of in some way determining the outcome of a game or a series by actually taking a necessary stand on an important issue . . . and, well . . . gosh!

That’s turtling worse than Max Lapierre.

“This was a reckless and reactionary play on which Weber threw a glancing punch and then shoved Zetterberg’s head into the glass,” lawgiver Brendan Shanahan said in a released statement, before cracking open Weber’s piggy bank and absconding with all the small change. “We reached out to Detroit following the game and were informed that Zetterberg did not suffer an apparent injury and should be in the lineup for Game 2.

“This play and the fine that addressed it will be significant factors in assessing any incidents involving Shea Weber throughout the remainder of the playoffs.”

So the fact that Zetterberg didn’t wind up on a gurney, escaped serious injury and actually practised Thursday apparently makes it, well, OK for someone to go all WWE at the end of a playoff game?

Now there’s a legal precedent you sure want on the books.

On Thursday in Music City, Weber muttered some “I’m glad he’s not hurt”-isms and hoped he could move on from the incident (like a bandit). He said he had a good talk with Shanahan (guess so; for him, anyway) and has been warned to be on his best behaviour (or a reasonable facsimile).

The dis-spiriting aspect of this latest incident is that over the passing of time we’ve become conditioned to be no longer enraged, or even mildly surprised, by the lameness of NHL justice, its total lack of uniformity.

This is a league, remember, that has no qualms about fining blabbermouth John Tortorella $20,000 for verbally chastising its officials, thereby apparently bringing the integrity of the game into disrepute, but can only find it in its conscience to invoke a US$2,500 tariff for deliberately ramming a player’s melon into the glass?

Playoffs or no, star player or not, cracked coconut or whole, that type of action deserves a suspension.

“I thought it was dirty,” Zetterberg told reporters on Thursday in Music City. “It did (make me angry). It was a direct (hit) to my head. You look at what happened in the last few years with head injuries, it shouldn’t belong in the game. My view, it was pretty bad.

“I guess the bar is set.”

As low as we’ve come to expect. Sadly.

http://sports.nationalpost.com/2012/04/13/george-johnson-shea-weber-should-have-been-suspended-for-henrik-zetterberg-hit/

[Patrick Kane]

[key2thecup]

[MariWanna]

Shanahan must be a big WWE fan.

[suolucidir]

(article)

[mgorospe]

Brown's blind side hit on Sedin pissed me off and then I think about Weber's... I don't even know what to effing call it... Weber's "hit" on Z and it's in a league of it's own in terms of rulings that make no effing sense.

This is the equivalent of a basketball player kicking another player in the stomach. Or a golfer spearing another player with their club. It's clearly just intent to injure someone else and it's not even an action that is natural to the game. Who cares if he wasn't injured. What if I'm a swimmer who tries to poke someones eye but just barely graze it. And seriously Shanahan how would you feel if it was YOUR head being unnaturally slammed into the boards like that? Effing BS.