Cherry’s 5 rules to safer hockey

A rash of injuries has swept through the NHL and junior hockey, and Hockey Night in Canada’s Don Cherry says they can easily be prevented if the league and its players make some tweaks in their game.

“I tried to warn them five years ago before [the NHL] put the rules in,” Cherry said during his Coach’s Corner segment Saturday.

A life-threatening head injury to junior hockey defenceman Ben Fanelli of the Kitchener Rangers headlines the list, which includes Tampa Bay Lightning blue-liner Victor Hedman(notes), Colorado’s Darcy Tucker(notes) and a slew of others.

There were over 100 players on the NHL’s injured list as of Saturday.

Cherry specifically targeted the interference crackdown instituted by the NHL after the lockout in 2004-05 and a rule limiting where goalies can handle the puck — the “trapezoid” rule — as serious causes of the injury epidemic.

He said those rules make it more dangerous for defencemen to play the puck in their own end. “They cannot dump the puck in and have forwards like [Todd] Bertuzzi coming in [and] nailing [defencemen],” Cherry said back in 2004.

To that end, Cherry listed five things that the NHL and its players can do to stop the march to the infirmary ward:

“When you go into a race for the puck in the corner, don’t be a dummy [and try to get there first],” Cherry said. “You give the other guy a chance to hit you. Never do that. Go in as a tie [even with the other player], that’s what I always did.”

Cherry thinks that taking out the “trapezoid rule,” which prevents the goalie from handling the puck in the corners, will take pressure off defencemen because netminders can play the puck more safely in those dangerous areas.

The NHL still forces players to race for the puck on an impending icing call, which makes for some horrific injuries to players who get tangled up while racing to the boards to touch the puck. A “no-touch” icing rule is enforced in Canadian junior hockey and in international play.

Cherry said defencemen should be aware if any big hitters on the opposing teams are on the ice against them.

He used Hedman’s injury as an example: The Lightning rookie played the puck while he was wheeling behind the Tampa net and was unaware that Ottawa enforcer Chris Neil(notes) had him lined up.

Neil flattened the Swedish defenceman, putting him out of the lineup with an upper-body injury.

Cherry’s most important rule. Forwards or defenceman who have the puck near the boards should never turn their back to an opposing player rushing in, or they’ll face the consequences when they are run face-first into the boards.