The noticeable absence of Boston Bruins top-line winger Nathan Horton from a high-paced Feb. 10 team practice was because he is still struggling to recover from his latest concussion and has actually taken a step back in his recovery. As a Bruins fan, it's upsetting to hear that "Horty" isn't doing so well in his recovery.
"He's got some symptoms, so we've pulled him back. That's why I said [earlier this week] that it's hard for me to come out every day and say whether it's a step forward or a step backwards. But he's back to square one and we're giving him some time here. Those symptoms, once he got on the ice, came back," Bruins coach Claude Julien said, according to Steve Conroy of the Boston Herald.
He suffered this concussion on Jan. 22 during a game against the Philadelphia Flyers when he was hit by the Flyers' Tom Sestito. You can see video of the incident here. When it happened, Horton got up and tried to fight back, also playing five more shifts before being kept out of the rest of the game. He has not played a single game since. At the time, Sestito did not receive any in-game penalties. Actually, Horton was the only one punished after that hit, for standing up and pushing Sestito in return.
Then, once the game was over, once Julien said Horton was being kept out because of a head injury that later evolved into a diagnosis of concussion, many Bruins fans (including myself) waited for the head of the Department of Player Safety, Brendan Shanahan, to mete out a punishment to Sestito and record one of his signature videos explaining why he chose to do so.
No such thing ever happened. Sestito skates a free man while Horton can't even go on the ice yet without symptoms reoccurring.
Frankly, the way this situation was handled is just more cause for me personally to question the way Shanahan punishes bad hits. Horton wasn't even carrying the puck at the time Sestito hit him, much like when Aaron Rome from the Vancouver Canucks brutally hit him in an incident that ended his Stanley Cup run early last June. He has an officially-diagnosed concussion. These are the sorts of things that officials should be concerned with eradicating from the game for the sake of player health both now and in the future. How are players supposed to learn what is okay and what is not when punishments can seem so irregular?
It's not as if Bruins fans haven't had mixed feelings about punishments given to the team before, though. The January five-game suspension for Brad Marchand after an incident involving the Canucks' Sami Salo drew praise from some, ire from others. Bruins general manager Peter Chiarelli said in a statement at the time that Marchand had actually asked the Dept. of Player Safety for help in clarifying what was allowable and what wasn't so that he could adjust his own style of play. He was told that if he was protecting his own safety, he wouldn't be punished. The fact that he was led Chiarelli to officially express his disappointment in the suspension.
Later in January, Andrew Ference drew a three-game suspension for a boarding incident with the New York Rangers' Ryan McDonagh. Ference was ejected from the game and later admitted fault. While Shanahan usually considers any injuries suffered from the play and prior disciplinary records when making punishments, both of those were irrelevant here. McDonagh played in the Rangers' next game three days later, so he wasn't injured badly, and Ference's rap sheet amounts to nothing but a fine he got during the playoffs against the Montreal Canadiens for making an obscene gesture.
Interestingly, the man who is in part responsible for this harder look at tough hits has also questioned the way punishments are handled. Marc Savard, the Bruin who has not played a game in more than a year after suffering two concussions in ten months, took to his Twitter not long after the Marchand suspension to express how he feels about it in a series of tweets quoted here:
"Shanahan in tough predicament, Marchand 5 games was a bad decision I believe he was warranted 2 games but on the other hand Jacques gets 3. Jacques hit is what we want out of the game give him 5 games that is exactly rule 48. I don't want Shannies job he's honestly never right. Know [sic] one is ever happy with Shanny but Marchy def didn't deserve 5 games. At the end of the day Shanny is doing a good job... Maybe rule 48 should say automatic 10 game suspension in black and white."
The Jacques Savard is referring to is the Anaheim Ducks' Jean-Francois Jacques, suspended three games in January for a hit to the head on Columbus Blue Jackets player R.J. Umberger.
I know Bruins fans are not alone in sometimes questioning the ways in which "Shanny" works-there is surely outcry from pretty much every fan base at one point or another-but knowing now that Horton is further from returning to the ice, while Sestito skates without having to be held accountable for what he did, really does make me question how punishments are made.
