Zdeno Skates Free and Player Recovers From A Broken Neck?

I can't understand this but read the clip below.  More so this is what my concern is with youth ice hockey. Failure to crack down on reckless players, reckless hits, impact to smaller players from obscenely large players, hits to the neck, head, and back, and hits to players that DON'T have the puck aren't hockey plays. Hitting and checking are not the same thing. Hockey is physical sport but it can be better managed with better rules, better education, and better policies to address problem behavior.

Removing checking is not the answer. Removing the problem players and penalizing their actions strongly is the answer. It is time to modernize youth ice hockey. Protect the players and develop more highly skilled players. They are kids,  protect them, teach them, and discipline their actions. The NHL can't get it right, youth ice hockey can.

Clipped From Yahoo

By Cotsonika The Full Article


So it was just an accident? So Zdeno Chara didn’t do anything wrong when he hit Max Pacioretty? So it isn’t Chara’s fault that Pacioretty’s head smacked into a stanchion between the benches and Pacioretty suffered a concussion and a broken neck?


The NHL decided against further discipline on Zdeno Chara for his devastating hit on Max Pacioretty.


So Chara skates free – other than the major penalty for interference and the game misconduct he received Tuesday night in the Boston Bruins’ 4-1 loss to the Montreal Canadiens – while Pacioretty faces a long, difficult recovery and an uncertain future?


I accept that accidents happen in hockey. Guys get hurt. It’s a contact sport.


And I have to admire the guts of NHL vice-president of hockey operations Mike Murphy, who reviewed video of the incident, conducted a telephone hearing with Chara and announced Wednesday that he could “find no basis to impose supplemental discipline,” knowing full well the outcry that would come from at least some corners of the hockey world.


But nothing?


“This was a hockey play that resulted in an injury because of the player colliding with the stanchion and then the ice surface,” Murphy said in a statement.


OK. It was a hockey play. But it comes at a time when concussions and questionable hits are plaguing the game, and the result was so severe and the punishment so light that you have to wonder: Why is this a hockey play? What’s next? Will a player be paralyzed? Will somebody die?