It hurts badly enough taking an elbow to the face in rugby. In hockey the speed of the players is much greater and there’s a hard slab of ice waiting for you at the bottom. Bad things happen when you take shots to the head unexpectedly at high speeds. That’s why it was such a malicious play. You can argue Patrice may not have intended to injure Tam but you can’t dispute that what he did was irresponsible at that level. By Major Junior players know that that type of play is unacceptable.
I stand corrected! Maybe I need to see the hit from another angle or something…
I’m no Cherry fan (except for his sartorial tastes, which are impeccable), but he’s never defended blatant dirty hits that I can recall. I don’t know why you would have expected him to defend or condone this hit - it was clearly an intentional, premeditated elbow to the head. I’d say intent to injure, and should draw consequences as such.
Actually, I think I understand why it didn’t look so severe. When Tam swerves a bit and Patrice throws his elbow out it looks more like a glancing blow. If you’ve ever been in a fight and were hit with an unexpected blow it might make more sense. A shot you know is coming will hurt, maybe stun, but rarely knock you out. It’s the unexpected shots that rattle you. One of the keys to Scott Stevens laying out so many guys was the screen the other defenceman set to keep the victim unaware until it was too late*. I think in this case Tam had to keep his hands on his stick to make the pass, swerved a bit to avoid Cormier and thus had every reason to not be prepared for a blow to the head. In the neutral zone anything can happen of course but I don’t think it’s reasonable for a player to have to prepare for head shots everywhere. That was the way I saw it at least.
*Completely Off-Topic but did you ever see Scott Stevens fall down after making a hit? I just watched some highlights yesterday and I can’t get over how well he stayed in position following a big hit.
Can’t recall Stevens falling down; he was a one man wrecking crew for sure. His hits were clean, but you gotta admit, he definitely knew that he was going to completely level someone and possibly cause injury.
Although this elbow hit is intentional, I really don’t think Cormier intended it to be so grievous. He really just wasn’t thinking and tried at the last second to get whatever piece of Tam he could. Hey, I’m not defending him. It’s a shitty situation all around.
Stevens was defintely trying to put people out of the game. I agree Cormier probably wasn’t, especially in overtime. I’m on my phone so I can’t link to YouTube but if you search for Craig Ludwig elbow it will bring up the game where he hit Teemu Selanne with an elbow that I thought was worse than this one. The injury wasn’t as severe but the intention was worse. I liked Craig Ludwig but I still think it was a credit to the Anaheim players that they made him fight his way off of the ice.
Can’t do Youtube at work…
The guy needs professional help. There are two other clips replying to that youtube clip and they are all the same - he decks some guy out of the blue while they have no idea that there is any likelihood of being flattened.
Each is a gutless cheap shot, the equivalent of punching some passing pedestrian in the head. And seriously, anyone who can do that more than once isn’t playing with a full deck.
And how can anyone maintain that it is not deliberate. Tam has already got rid of the puck, Cormier is down ice from him and moves right to skate a line that, after elbowing Tam in the head, leaves him up ice from the incident. The change in direction to hit Tam is obvious.
In Australia Rugby League used to be rife with cheap head shots but once the NRL decided that mothers didn’t want their kids playing a sport like that, they began to ruthlessly stamp it out. They introduced rules that make it the defenders responsibility not to hit guys in the head. So you can be charged for hitting someone with a high tackle deliberately, recklessly or carelessly. Each category carries a different suspension.
Ah sorry. I forgot not everyone works weird shifts like me. Briefly, Selanne blows past Ludwig, Ludwig takes the right angle to recover but then smashes Selanne’s head against the glass on the end boards. It was in the playoffs and Selanne was their top guy so Anaheim made Ludwig fight a couple of guys and then drew him out of the penalty box for another scrap. I like Cormier but I think a guy throwing cheap shots should have to fight his way off the ice. I think Don Cherry would support that. 
You’ll see from my earlier post that I disagree that Cormier simply “threw out an elbow”, I think he clearly goes right to hit Tam. If he kept the same line he was skating he would have had to stick out his arm to contact him.
However your point is quite true. I remember years ago reading Sting Like a Bee - The Muhammad Ali Story by Jose Torres. Torres had been world light heavyweight champion before becoming a writer. He says in the book that you are usually only knocked out by a punch that you don’t see coming. And the purpose of combination punches is to position your opponents head so that you can deliver one. Otherwise, he says, your body adjusts to take the blow.
It explained why one cheap shot out of nowhere can drop someone on the spot. And made sense of the only time I was knocked out - I ran past another player in a Rugby game and as he turned his elbow accidentally clipped me on the temple. Next thing I knew I was regaining consciousness with no memory of going from running to laying on the field.
Cormier out for the rest of the season and the playoffs, in the Quebec Juior League at least.
TSN adds that the suspension means that Cormier will not be able to play in any league under Hockey Canada’s jurisdiction, nor can he play for the Devils or their AHL team until his QMJHL team is eliminated from playoffs.
I lost all respect for Cherry years and years ago when he defended Dale Hunter for his injury-causing cheap shot on Pat LaFontaine after LaFontaine scored a goal.
Not LaFontaine, but Pierre Turgeon maybe? The year where the Islanders beat the Penguins in Game 7 overtime? Before that, in the first round against Washington, Turgeon scored to basically put the Capitals away, and Hunter flattened him.
Or are we remembering two different things?