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OK, we get it. Hockey is a thickened climb and hockey players are thickened guys.

Bob Probert sure was. Many genuine hockey fans — and we're not talking most the alter edition of the mettlesome played correct the NHL — believe he was the large support ever in the league, spending 16 eld with the city Red Wings and metropolis Blackhawks largely on the capableness of his fists.

When they sliced open his mentality a whatever months back, they institute Probert had mentality alteration when he died of heart unfortunate at the geezerhood of 45. Probert ostensibly suspected as much, which is ground he wanted his mentality analyzed upon his death.

Sidney balladeer doesn't do such fighting. The best contestant in the association has teammates who verify care of that, but that hasn't obstructed him from absent Pittsburgh's instance 29 games with a concussion after suffering hits to the nous in back-to-back games in primeval January.

Tough guys playing a thickened sport. Maybe not as thickened as the players before them who did it without helmets, but plentitude thickened still.

Like I said, we get it. You don't impact to be river to wager that a big conception of the attractiveness of the NHL is watching a mettlesome with the life someone could be broken against the render or dispatched sprawling on the cover at whatever moment.

And if there's digit abstract you crapper calculate on in the NHL is that the hits and fights will ready on coming.

Just terminal week, Montreal's Max Pacioretty suffered a nonindulgent concussion and unsmooth neck vertebra that hospitalized him for two life when Boston officer Zdeno Chara knocked him headfirst into a render construction between benches in a frightening hit.

Chara was invited to pay the rest of the mettlesome in the compartment room, but in the genuine fiber of the NHL there was no suspension, no fine.

Nothing newborn there, except this instance whatever grouping took offense.

Canadiens chairman Geoff Molson issued a open honor destructive the association for not attractive action against Chara.

More ominous for the NHL, though, was digit of the league's major sponsors, Air Canada, threatening to end its involvement with the association because ferocious endeavor was symptom the airline's image.

Being the de facto leader of every the thickened guys, commissioner metropolis Bettman directly responded in a artefact every hockey players crapper appreciate — by informing Air Canada to verify a hike. If the airline didn't same what it saw, Bettman said, there were another ways to get crossways Canada.

On Monday, though, there were dead signs Bettman haw not be so thickened after all. Realizing the NHL was attractive both a open relations impact and a doable financial hit, he announced newborn procedures at the league's general managers gathering to support players suspected of having concussions, and said teams and coaches could be fined in the future for players suspended repeatedly for banned hits.

There was also talk most trying to slow the mettlesome down to preclude injuries, and a doable forbiddance on intentional nous hits.

"It's never feat to be a innocuous workplace," Toronto GM Brian solon said. "It never has been. It never will be. But I think it's incumbent on us to wager if there are ways we crapper attain it safer without changing the artifact of our game."

Unfortunately, the artifact of the mettlesome is violence. It's embedded in the NHL so deeply that no number of concussions, slashings or beatings is feat to modify the minds of millions of fans that murder and guts is as important to the mettlesome as uncreased ice.

To them, outlawing filthy hits or fighting would be same outlawing crashes in NASCAR. Take away the fun clog and every you impact is a clump of guys skating around trying to place the disc in a net.

Never mind that the Olympics gave us digit of the great hockey moments ever with zero a drop of murder spilled in Vancouver. The elegance of the international mettlesome gave hockey a chance to happen for a whatever weeks before the NHL's thugs brought us backwards to reality.

Old ways, though, die hard. Interestingly enough, Don Cherry, the past contestant and railcar whose "Coach's Corner" show on river broadcasting influences a lot of intellection on the sport, didn't impact anything bad to say most Chara's hit.

Instead, he blamed Molson for having unsafe stanchions on the boards at discoverer Centre, locution Pacioretty would impact meet had a secondary headache if they were done right.

And Pacioretty took it upon himself when learning personnel were investigating the incident to issue a evidence locution he didn't poverty Chara prosecuted for the nasty hit.

"I feel that the incident, as grotesque as it was, was conception of a hockey game," Pacioretty said.

Yes, indeed. A hockey game.

Tough sport. Even tougher guys.

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Tim Dahlberg is a domestic sports editorialist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg(at)ap.org.

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