McKenzie: Head-hunter pays the price

Weller, Tootoo and Gelinas

Bob McKenzie

10/12/2007 9:37:14 AM

It's funny how things work out.

Jordin Tootoo of the Nasvhille Predators takes a run at Phoenix rookie Daniel Winnik – and it says here Tootoo was targeting Winnik's head – and it's Coyote rookie Craig Weller who gets the match penalty for intent to injure on the play, because Weller clotheslined Tootoo after the hit.

Fair enough, be responsible for your actions. Weller was no angel on the play. So be it. Mind you, there's not going to be a suspension. For Weller or anyone else. While the referee may have seen intent to injure, the league is less convinced that it's suspendable. Nothing else to see here, folks, move on.

But it's the Tootoo hit that should be the real concern.

If ever there were a hit where it looked like a player was intentionally trying to hit someone in the head, this was it.

I've got no axe to grind with Tootoo. Mind you, I don't have to play against him. The extent of my interaction with Tootoo was during the World Junior Championship in Halifax and he was a charming fellow who gave me and others Caribou Jerky from his native Nunavut. He was a feel-good story then. In the NHL now, not so much.

NHL players regularly identify Tootoo as one of the most dangerous players in the league, a player who hits to hurt, who is always pushing the envelope.

Well, all I know is that when Winnik came around the net and into Death Valley, Tootoo ran hard at him.

In fairness to Tootoo, and all those who grow weary of my preoccupation with high hits, two things about Winnik must be noted. One, he had the puck on his stick and was fair game to be hit. Two, he had his head down. That could have been a lethal combination, given where he was on the ice and who was on the ice for the other team.

So, yes, hitting is not only allowed in the NHL, it is encouraged. Thanks for the reminder.

But the way I saw it, Tootoo ran and ran hard at the much bigger Winnik. He leaped and used his shoulder – not his forearm, not his elbow – and targeted Winnik's head. How he didn't get a charging penalty on the play, I don't know, but there was no call of any kind.

Fortunately for Winnik, it was just a glancing blow. No injury on the play, just Weller's subsequent clotheslining of Tootoo, which left the Predator on the ice for a bit. If Tootoo was actually hurt on the play, perhaps Weller would have been facing a suspension today, but there was a sense that perhaps Tootoo may have embellished just a bit.

Hard to say what's embellishment sometimes, just as it's hard for an armchair critic like myself to ascertain intent on a hit.

That said, there is no question in my mind that Tootoo was looking to take off Winnik's head with the hit. As Maxwell Smart would have said – sorry, kids, look it up – "missed him, by that much." The more I watch it, the more I see it: a smaller player leaping up to hit a bigger player and not going hard with his shoulder into the other's guy body but leaping up to make a head shot.

But I will give Tootoo the benefit of the doubt that he won't get from opposing players and that's simply because of this: As long as the NHL maintains a legal check can be one where the shoulder is driven into the opposing player's head, players like Tootoo, and others, are going to take advantage of that.

As long as the opposing player has the puck, as long as the shoulder is used, as long as the hitter doesn't jump ridiculously, the truth is the opposing player's head is fair game.

And if you watch Tootoo's hit on Winnik as he came through Death Valley, you just have to know that Tootoo knew it too.

So for all the anti-head shot talk that was generated by the Steve Downie hit on Dean McAmmond, and now the furor over Jesse Boulerice's crosscheck to the face of Ryan Kesler, there's no doubt in my mind that there's still an open invitation to legally take off a guy's head.

You just have to know how and when to do it and there's no shortage of players in the NHL who understand that.