For a league that has gotten it wrong far too many times this season, this was an example of the WCHA finally getting it close to right.
The conference announced Monday that it will suspend St. Cloud State junior forward Aaron Marvin for three games because of the hit he delivered to Wisconsin senior forward Blake Geoffrion Feb. 20. Given the WCHA's seeming indifference toward contact to the head and its incompetent refereeing when it comes to illegal hits, the suspension is a small victory, if one that shouldn't have taken nearly this long.
Anyone who saw the video of the hit on Geoffrion—which you can see for yourself by searching for it online—will tell you Marvin laid his shoulder into Geoffrion's head as the Badgers skated the puck through the neutral zone. Geoffrion's head whipped back, and he fell to the ice, where he remained nearly motionless until trainers and his fellow players helped escort him off the ice.
Marvin received no penalty on the play, nor any punishment until the WCHA handed down its ruling Monday afternoon. He will now miss St. Cloud's series with Minnesota State this weekend as well as the first game of the WCHA playoffs.
Perhaps in the NHL that hit would get Marvin in trouble with Geoffrion's teammates but not with the league; after all, he never left his feet and did not use his elbow. Even Wisconsin head coach Mike Eaves admitted that, back when he played, the hit to Geoffrion would be considered clean.
""Quite frankly, in the old days, there wouldn't have been a penalty,"" Eaves said last Monday. ""Blake just got caught with his head down and got hit.""
But in college hockey, where any contact to the head is illegal, there is no way the WCHA could justify not calling a penalty on Marvin for the hit or ejecting him from the game. The fact that it took them nine days to realize something anyone watching the video can plainly see—that Marvin's shoulder made contact with Geoffrion's head—and to hand down a penalty is even more absurd.
This isn't Marvin's first time dealing with the WCHA's discipline system either. Remember that it was Marvin who ended Hobey Baker Award hopeful Chay Genoway's season with North Dakota with an even more vicious hit Nov. 13.
In that instance, Marvin slammed Genoway's head into the boards, giving the star a concussion that has kept him from playing since. The WCHA's referees initially bungled that play as well, penalizing the wrong St. Cloud player for the hit before eventually handing down a one-game suspension many viewed as too lenient.
Although it's good to see Marvin punished for his continuing trend of illegal hits, the WCHA missed a chance to send a message that contact to the head will not be tolerated and took entirely too long to hand down the decision.
It took me one replay to tell that the hit on Geoffrion was a case of contact to the head, so how could it have possibly taken the WCHA nine days to come up with a punishment? Considering the pressure many have put on the conference to protect players from illegal hits, it is ridiculous for the WCHA to take so much time to come up with a decision that is, at best, a good start in punishing players.
""Until the NCAA decides to really get serious about protecting the players you are going to see more incidents like the Aaron Marvin hit on Chay Genoway,"" a writer from the Sioux hockey blog Goon's World told Yahoo! Sports' Puck Daddy the day before Marvin's hit on Geoffrion. ""Seriously, what's to stop a team from just going out and taking a run [on] a star player with the intent of injuring him if you're only going to have the offending player get suspended for [a] flimsy one- or two- game suspension?
This is a legitimate concern, especially if the WCHA and other college hockey conferences continue their weak track record on discipline.
Aaron Marvin's hit on Blake Geoffrion is not the first time college hockey has missed a chance to send a message to players that they will not tolerate illegal hits. And until they start handing down real punishments—and stop taking more than a week to do so—we are going to keep seeing players like Marvin leaving players lying on the ice with concussions, or something even worse.
Has the WCHA done enough to curb hits to the head? E-mail Nico at savidgewilki@dailycardinal.com.
