“The Finnish journalist examines the Simon slash and where it fits in the “tough guy code.”.

More after the jump.

The Code
Maybe Chris Simon did hockey – if not Ryan Hollweg – a huge favor with his slash across the face. Just as the NHL GMs, or some of them, were lobbying for the removal of the instigator rule, Simon struck.

Maybe releasing the tough guys is not the best idea, after all?

Hey, at least the NHL made the news, even on ESPN. Rejoice!

Or not.

Anybody who’s seen the slash can’t think that it’s just “a part of the game,” because, well, it’s not. I also find it very strange that any hockey player would use his stick that way. That particular movement hasn’t usually worked its way into the hockey players’ kinetic memory.

And as far as I can decode The Code, what Simon did wasn’t even a part of The Code. My understanding is that the tough guys are there to protect the skilled players by fighting other tough guys.

Anyhow, maybe somebody can explain what Brendan Witt meant with this comment on TSN:

“It always looks worse,” Witt said. “I saw the guy after the game, he looked fine. That’s enough to tell me that it wasn’t THAT bad. You know what I mean?”

This is how I interpret that:

1) Ryan Hollweg’s a pretty attractive guy any way you look at it.
2) Witt’s an incurable pessimist who thinks that things could always be worse.
3) Witt’s an incurable optimist who thinks that things are never as bad as they seem.
4) Witt was adhering to The Code, Section 2, Paragraph 7: Thy shalt not talk badly about your teammates.

As part of The Code, the head coach and the team captain of the team that has players doing something idiotic never see the incident no matter what. A guy on a breakaway stripping down to his jockstrap (kind of like Ned on Slap Shot), and you can be sure the coach is scribbling down power play lines on his notepad.

Now, the NHL acted swiftly and gave Mr. Simon a nice hard slap on the backside. The problem is that the top two clips of the incident total close to a million views on YouTube.

For many, if not most hockey fans, the Simon/Hollweg incident is already so last week.

But for many, it’s unfortunately the only thing they’ll see this season.