Hockey Talkey

Caught up with my dude Dave Semenko last Friday. I met him when I was the hockey writer for a newspaper in the Midwest around 2000, and we've kept in contact a little bit ever since. His NHL career included a few years with those great Edmonton Oilers teams of the 1980s, when he played on a line with a guy named Wayne Gretzky. Semenko was a little bit of an enforcer back in the day, so he had no shortage of opinions when I told him about the vicious Chris Simon high-stick on New York Rangers center Ryan Hollweg (watch the video). Semenko said he thinks the physical aspect of NHL hockey, as well as the honor system, are different now than they were back when he played.

"If you ran at the other team's star player, you were going to be held accountable," Semenko said in a telephone interview from his home in Edmonton, where he's been a scout with the Oilers for nearly a decade. "There used to be a time when players would police themselves. Let the skill guys play, let the bangers bang, and let's just play hockey."

With the instigator penalties that were introduced before the 2005-06 season, tough guys seem to be taking more chances knowing that they've got a little bit of flexibility to work with. In the meantime, an official might run a guy off for a two-minute minor, but that punishment hardly seems to fit the crime.

"A two-minute penalty isn't that threatening," Semenko said. A bruiser can incur three instigator penalties in a season before being suspended, a fairly unpopular rule around NHL circles.

"There are a lot of people in this game who have a very strong feeling about the instigator rule," Semenko said.