I understand, but I think a 2 game suspension for a 1st time offender in a play that was clearly not intentional would teach well. I think a better solution in this case would be to teach Ben Smith to make a play with his head up. did you even watch the play? his head was up. watch it from 0:30 to 0:50 when it's in slow motion; his head is up pretty much the whole time, except possibly a split second before contact is made as he's making a move. http://blogs.suntimes.com/blackhawks/2011/09/brendan_smith_suspended_five_r.html i'll take brendan smith's word for it that he wasn't intentionally targeting the head, but given that there's an epidemic of concussions in hockey, something has to be done to get players to take this seriously. the issue wasn't skating with his head down, it's making a cut in a supposedly dangerous area of the ice. but the onus has to be on the checking player, not the offensive player. when ben smith cut, brendan smith had options, those being to cut as well and make a full body check, or just whiff and give him a scoring chance. the bottom line is that you can't just continue on your same path and drill a guy right in the head. smith will lose something like $25k because of the suspension. james wisniewski (obvious dirty hit on clutterbuck) is losing something like half a million. so in addition to hurting their team by not being able to play for several games, they're also losing a big chunk of change. hopefully this gets the message through and the frequency of head shots starts going down.