Pacioretty Hit: When Is Enough Enough When It Comes to Investigating?

The big controversy in the NHL this season has been head shots and, once again, it has come to the forefront with a hit on Montreal’s Max Pacioretty by Boston’s captain Zdeno Chara.

The hit left Pacioretty with a severe concussion and a fractured vertebra that has him out indefinitely.

Chara didn’t receive any discipline for the hit from the NHL, but may be receiving it in the way of the Montreal police.

Everyone knows that Montreal takes their hockey seriously. They love their team and the sport, but at what point do they take it too far? The burning of pictures of other teams during the playoffs was one thing, but bringing police into a hit that is part of hockey is a totally different situation.

Yes, hits as serious as Pacioretty’s should be looked into by the NHL and push the big issue of head shots back into the front of peoples’ minds, but should the hit be looked at by the police? I don’t think so.

Chara isn’t like players such as Dan Carcillo, who are out there searching for a way to hurt people; Mike Murphy even said that was one of the reasons Chara didn’t get punished (in addition to Murphy believing that the hit was just one of those hockey things that wasn’t done with an intent to target the head).

At this point, the issue should have been filed into the “this is why we need to figure out head shot issues” file, but taken out of the punishment file.

Hits happen in hockey, it’s how the game works. As the sanctioning body of the game in North America and the ones that handle the games of these two teams, the NHL should have the final say when it comes to hits that happen on the ice during an NHL event.

Yes, the Pacioretty hit was scary and a suspension was expected, but when the NHL said no, that should have been the end of it. The Montreal police shouldn’t be involved in this issue; I know they love their hockey and Pacioretty is a promising player, but this is taking it a little too far.

I honestly don’t think anything will come from this investigation, but the idea that there even is an investigation outside of the NHL, in my opinion, crosses a line.

Montreal is a hockey-crazy city, there is nothing to dispute on that front, but in this instance, they may be a bit too hockey crazy.

Let the NHL do their job and make the decision on what happens to Chara. If their decision is something you don’t agree with, then complain about it for a little bit before moving on—don’t bring a higher power into it.

The big issue here is head shots and how they can be prevented, not a manhunt for a guy that made a clean hit, just at the wrong part of the rink. The only good thing to come from this is perhaps even more urgency to solve the head shot problem.

Other than that, every party involved in this is going to be affected more than could ever be imagined right after the hit happened.