Point/Counter-Point with Chris from NOHS: Punishing Intent vs. Outcome

Now, back to hockey, I think this line of thinking only applies to the "injurious" penalties. Slashing, spearing, butt-ending, etc. Things where the only real reason for doing it is to hurt your opponent.
 "Obstructing" penalties, like tripping, holding, hooking don’t really apply because the goal in most cases is to impede your opponent, not to hurt them, and injuries that result from these penalties are more fluky in nature.

Agreed.

the person throwing the punch had no intent to severely injury the person, but their punch hit just the wrong place, or the victim had some sort of pre-existing condition that made them more vulnerable? If the victim is still severely injured or killed, does this affect your opinion on what the punishment should be?

Why shouldn’t both the perpetrators be treated the same? How is that justice?

One could just as easily ask the question “Why should both the perpertrators be treated the same?”

In the analogy I listed, mitigating factors such as whether the victim had a heart problem or whether they hit their head after falling would come into play, but the end result is taken into consideration when making a determination of punishment because the individual’s actions were what precipitated the sequence of events up to and including the resulting consequences.

In my line of work, we have to answer questions like this all the time (and no, I’m not a lawyer). We have situations where nearly identical incidents are handled much differently based on the damages caused. We also have to take the injured party as we find them, meaning that even if they have some sort of pre-existing condition or injury, any injuries or damages caused by a party’s actions (including aggravations of those pre-existing injuries) do not absolve them of further punishment. In essence, if I rear end someone in my car and they have a prior back injury but aren’t any more hurt than right before I hit him, my exposure would be far less than if they sustain an aggravation or exacerbation of that injury.

I disagree with this statement:

Murder and Attempted Murder should be identical.

Not the percieved results, player reputation, or half-assed assumptions of guilt. A clear-cut response to infractions that all players are aware of (and have heavy enough consequences to deter the violators) will do just that: deter violators.

The main issue I have with this (although I agree with some of it) is that “intent” is such a subjective thing. We can’t always readily see what a player’s intentions were, although we can always speculate on what we believe the player wanted to achieve with their actions. if you’re going to have a referee call a “quick, decisive, firm” penalty based on their initial reaction to a play only having seen it once, then how are they supposed to judge intent when they may not have seen the entire play develop?

Let me clarify: I don’t think refs call a penalty simply because a player is injured. However, there’s a natural tendency in all of us to react differently to something because the results were worse than what was imagined by the perpetrator.

A clear-cut response to infractions that all players are aware of (and have heavy enough consequences to deter the violators) will do just that: deter violators.

Agreed, but shouldn’t players also understand that the consequences of their actions are going to affect the amount of punishment they receive? These players aren’t stupid: they know that swinging a stick at a guy’s head or punching someone in the back of the head and driving them into the ice could cause injuries to their victim. Wouldn’t the knowledge that any injuries incurred by the victim will result in harsher punishment be an even bigger deterrent on top of knowing that their recklessness was going to be punished in the first place?

is where does Bouchard’s responsibility for his intent end?

I’m whole-heartedly an intent guy. If you try to kill me, but the gun happens to jam, or your aim is terrible, I see that as the exact same act as actually killing me and the punsihment should be the same. Murder and Attempted Murder should be identical.

Ok, I could see an argument for that.

So we don’t punish Bouchard because his intent was more benign than the punishment. He didn’t try to hit Bouchard in the face, he just tried to pop him one in the hands. Punishing the act of intending to pop a guy in the hands (especially with a two-game ban) is definitely something I would say is over-the-top as far as punishments go.

I can accept those as realities.

But where does Bouchard’s responsibility for what happens after he does start intentionally swinging his stick end?

If the guy from your example has a gun aimed at you, but he has no intention of shooting you, he is definitely not trying to murder you. But what happens if a squirrel bites him and he jerks his hand closed in pain, firing a bullet into your chest? He didn’t intend to murder you, but you’d be 100% more alive if he had never aimed the gun at you in the first place. Is the squirrel now a murderer and he just an innocent victim of circumstance?

maybe I accidentally flagged it?

But a slash to the hands is essentially a “hockey play” while what you’ve described is an act of assault (regardless of outcome).

I would not punish those two acts differently because throwing your stick like that is so far beyond reckless so as to create an immediate necessity to curb the behavior.

While the Bouchard/Calvert example is one where the role of luck is considered to show players the risks they take (on both sides) when they engage in extracurricular stickwork, the hypothetical example above extends too far beyond what may be acceptable as a 20-times-per-game kind of occurrence.

Try to slash a guy on the hands and you’re either going to get away with it, you’re going to get 2 minutes, you’re going to get four minutes, you’re going to get a major, you’re going to get a major and a misconduct, you’re going to get suspended, or you’re going to get a combination of those things. As long as players realize that this is the realm of possible outcomes for doing something which is more-or-less harmless but still not allowed (and in cases where the “less harmless” comes into play are consistently going to be the cases where the more strict punishments also come into play), then the system works as it should. The league cannot stop players from doing this, no matter how draconian they are in punishments, but they can prevent it from proliferating and they can punish wrongdoings.

Let’s change up the javelin example a bit. Instead of throwing a stick, javelin-style at what I’m assuming is the back of an unsuspecting player’s head, he instead chucks it helicopter-style at his feet while he skates away. Either way, this is a dirty, stupid, and malicious act. One way or another, this player deserves a suspension for what he does. However, if his victim gets tripped up by the flung stick and gets back up no worse for wear, I’d be calling for a lesser suspension than if tripping over the stick created a situation by where the victim fell awkwardly into the dasher and had to miss several weeks with an injury (although, to be clear, I’d be calling for a pretty long suspension even in the no-harm-done example).

The difference isn’t in the degree of intent, it’s in the need to punish the player for causing more damages as a result of his wrongdoing.

Intent is still important though. Let’s change the helicopter stick toss from an intentional and angry act to a playful prank gone horribly wrong. These two guys honestly like one another; there is no animosity between them and the player who throws the stick really just wants to harmlessly trip up his buddy for a laugh. In this example, I wouldn’t suspend the guy regardless of whether his buddy shook it off or ended up hospitalized. I still might fine him for dangerous negligence, but the guy who threw the stick is going to punish himself enough knowing that his intended prank ended up seriously hurting his good friend.

The way I see it in this scenario, player 1 should be harshly punished for the act no matter what the outcome is… however if player 2 is injured, player 1 should be punished more harshly. I don’t think the punishment should ever be reduced because the player wasn’t injured because of luck, rather I think the punishment should be more harsh if player 2 is injured. So if there are more severe consequences to player 2, player 1 should also have more severe consequences.

 In this scenario, it’s also easier to see/prove the intent of player 1. Often times it’s difficult to prove what the offending player’s intent is (careless, reckless or malicious) without being able to read their mind, and that’s when (in my opinion) the result (injury or no injury) plays a bigger factor in the punishment.
I don’t think the offending player should receive a lesser punishment because the victim/intended victim was lucky enough to escape injury, but if there is injury, I think the offending player should be punished more harshly because there were harsher results. Does that make sense?

Chris, do you have similar distinction? Would you want a disciplinary decision to be handed down to a player without any note/consideration for the injured player at all? I guess what I’m trying to figure out is how different we’re really thinking. Do you think the resulting injury should be taken into consideration a little, or not at all? I do understand what you’re saying and I guess my hesitancy comes in here… If player 1 hits player 2’s face with a high stick because player 1 is being a jerk, should he receive the same punishment if player 2 only sustains a bloody lip as he does if player 2 loses teeth, has a broken nose that causes him to miss games? At what level (if any) would you personally take resulting injury into account?