Chris Pronger vs. Chris Simon

And no, it isn't what you think it is.

I can sit and try and defend the National Hockey League until I am blue, white, and orange in the face but it's times like these that make it really, really hard to understand what people are thinking in the war room in Toronto.

Chris Pronger gets eight games and Chris Simon gets 30 games for essentially the same thing. It just doesn't make sense. Look at the Zapruder-quality film of Pronger's stomp with the skate and then rewind to see Simon' stomp and you'll see that for all intents and purposes, they're the same thing. There's maliciousness in each and both guys were trying to injure the other. Simon--if you can believe it--comes off as the better guy because even though he yanked Jarkko Ruutuu down, he stepped on Ruutuu's boot with his skate, and there's no way he is gonna slice through the boot. Pronger shakes his foot free from being entangled before he stomps down on Ryan Kesler's leg--a leg covered only in hockey socks!

See, the real difference here is that Chris Pronger is the captain of the defending champions and is a true star of the NHL and Chris Simon is a grunt-work lifer doing the heavy lifting. Both men tried to injure their opponents but because Pronger is a star, he gets the Superstar Treatment.

The real issue here is how the heck a spineless finger-sniffer like Colin Campbell gets to be the NHL Dean of Discipline if he isn't going to hand out reasonable punishment. This isn't an Islander issue or a respect issue; this is a common sense issue. Pronger gets 8 games and Simon gets 30. What Simon did "extra" by dragging down Ruutuu is worth an additional 22 games? Please. That is just plain horrible and Campbell knows it.

At the very least, if we all can agree that Simon's suspension was too long, then Pronger should have been forced to sit out the last nine games of the Anaheim schedule and the first three of the playoffs. The Ducks would then theoretically be missing their stalwart defenseman for three important games where they conceivably could be down 3-0 in the first-round playoff series. That would be punishment. But to give Pronger 8 games is almost a reward--a guy who plays lots of minutes gets to rest up, miss eight games, come back and play the season-ender as a tune-up and then tries to defend the Stanley Cup he won the year before. Egregious!

And by the way, Chris Pronger needs to wake the hell up and realize that as he gets older, he has a reputation to protect. He's one of the better players of the generation but if he keeps pulling stupid crap like this, he'll be remembered more as an out-of-control bonehead than as a player who truly made a difference on the ice.