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No discipline from the NHL on Eric Nystrom’s head shot on Daniel Briere

According to Renaud Lavoie of TVA, the NHL has judged that the Eric Nystrom head shot on Danny Briere last night was accidental contact and will not be applying any sort of punishment.

I would buy the hit being accidental if Nystrom hadn’t jumped into the hit, directly targeting Briere’s head.

Nystrom may have been on that path by accident, but he saw Briere before contact and changed position in order to make direct contact with his head. Why would he jump if he wasn’t going for a high hit?

Nystrom getting suspended doesn’t benefit the Montreal Canadiens in any way, but it is getting rather tiring watching players take cheap shots continually with no discipline. The head shot on Josh Gorges was even worse than this one, worse than head shots that have seen players get long suspensions, yet the NHL didn’t review it, and instead called it one of the plays of the night.

I guess that’s par for the course with the NHL’s wheel of justice.

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Should there have been suspensions for the head shots the Predators committed last night?

Both hits should have resulted in suspensions 76
The Nystrom hit was suspension worthy 26
The Bourque hit was suspension worthy 28
Neither hit was suspendable, the NHL was right 23

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