It came as no surprise that Zdeno Chara's controversial hit on Max Pacioretty came up during a congressional panel discussion featuring NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.
Bettman was on panel encouraging American children to play hockey, and when he was questioned about the sport's high risk of injury, Bettman said most of the recent incidents in the NHL have occurred due to accidents on the ice, rather than dangerous hits to the head, TSN.com reports.
"What's interesting … is that the rise in concussions in the preliminary data from this season seem to be coming from accident events, collisions, players falling and banging into other things," Bettman said. "Not from head hits."
Player safety has been a hot-button topic this season in the NHL, one that the Bruins have been very familiar with considering the after effects of the Matt Cooke hit on Marc Savard, and the more recent hit on Max Pacioretty. Bettman emphasized that the safety of the players is still a "paramount concern" for the NHL.
That being said, Bettman also mentioned that there is no need to "over-legislate" head hits in the game, and said that he supported the decision to not assess any further punishments to Chara for the hit on Pacioretty.
"Our hockey operations people are extraordinarily comfortable with the decision that they made," Bettman said. "It was a horrific injury, we're sorry that it happened in our fast-paced physical game, but I don't think whether or not supplemental discipline was imposed would change what happened and in fact the people in the game who I have heard from almost to a person … believe that it was handled appropriately by hockey operations."
The issue of head hits will be brought up again during the NHL general managers meeting next week in Florida.
