The Magical Time Before The Instigator Rule

Show any hard hit on a star player, or any cheap shot, and someone is bound to talk about the need to dump the instigator rule. They may reference the magical time before the instigator rule was implemented, generally in a ‘back when men were men and rats were hunted down and killed’ sort of way.

It’s self-delusion, of course.

So I did a quick Google News archives search for “NHL cheap shot,” confining myself to the decade prior to the stringent enforcement of the instigator rule. I got 29 pages of results, and I’ve found video for a bunch of them. Let’s review the tape.

This is 5’9” scoring forward Brian Propp of the Philadelphia Flyers (commonly known as the “Broad Street Bullies”) taking a hit from Chris Chelios in May 1989. The Flyers met Montreal in the Conference Finals, and unlike now teams dressed enforcers in the playoffs. A quick look at the Flyers roster shows a long list of tough customers, from skilled muscle like Rick Tocchet at the top down to Craig Berube and Al Secord at the bottom.

And here’s Dave Brown – a 6’5” enforcer who would later ply his trade in Edmonton – crosschecking Tomas Sandstrom early in 1988-89. Sandstrom had been the New York Rangers’ second-leading scorer the previous season.

I couldn’t find video on the third incident – one that Sabres’ head coach Rick Dudley described as a “cheap shot” on star forward Pat Lafontaine – but I’ve included the piece that ran in the New York Times on the incident below. It’s worth noting that the Sabres had three guys with 300+ PIM that year.

And here’s Montreal enforcer Chris Nilan, “playing” against the “Big, Bad” Bruins. The player he butt-ends in the face is Boston captain Rick Middleton, one of the cleanest players in the game and a long-time scorer for the Bruins (over a 1005-game NHL career spanning the 70’s and 80’s, Middleton recorded just 157 PIM).

Then there’s this article from August 1988, entitle “NHL refuses to let brightest stars shine.” The whole article is behind a pay wall, but here are two paragraphs from the free preview:

I’ve also included first this sucker punch and then cross-check from Wendel Clark on Slava Fetisov. The first incident was apparently unprovoked, while the second came about after Fetisov tried to take Clark out at the knees. Was Clark sending a message by hammering a star player or was Fetisov earning himself space by exacting vengeance on Clark or was Clark protecting himself from a dirty hit with a thoroughly understandable cross-check to the face before delivering the knockout blow?

Hey, some Oilers content! Here’s Edmonton goon Troy Mallette elbowing Pat Lafontaine in the face shortly after Lafontaine’s return from the Macoun cheap shot discussed above. Once again, keep in mind the Sabres have three guys who would collect 300+ PIM that season; Jay Wells, who pursues Mallette on the ice picked up 157 PIM in 41 games before being dealt away by Buffalo.

There’s plenty of other incidents in the archives, questions about who the best cheap-shot artist in the NHL is (including a player poll with that very question), complaints about guys taking cheap shots with sticks because they wear visors, Wayne Gretzky asking the NHL to outlaw fighting, and plenty of other fun stuff.  Not only did I not look past the first five pages, I’ve omitted a bunch of stuff.

All of this was going on before the NHL started cracking the instigator rule whip. Disrespect, hard hits on good players, and flat-out thuggery hasn’t crept into the game because of the instigator rule. If anything, the NHL’s cleaner today with modern-day goons in the mold of Nilan and Mallette and Brown fighting for their existence. Because here’s the thing: the guys whose careers are disappearing thanks to the instigator rule are, by and large, the same guys who elbow stars in the face or feed them the butt end of a stick.

Players policing themselves doesn’t work. There’s a long, long, long track record proving that very thing. People who say otherwise are only fooling themselves.