Joni Pitkanen Injury & Ron Hainsey Signing

First, the Joni Pitkanen injury. He broke his heel on an icing race back in April. He was expected to be recovered in time for the season and the Hurricanes were counting on him to anchor their D. Instead, it turned out the recovery wasn’t going as planned. In fact, the Hurricanes have announced that Pitkanen will miss the entire season. You know it’s a serious injury when the guy will miss the season before the season’s even started. Pitkanen’s had a lot of injury issues before, and this break is similar to the one that ended Pat Peake’s career back in the 90s, so let’s hope the best for Pitkanen. It’s an easy bone to shatter and reportedly Pitkanen broke his heel in eight places. Here’s the video.

But this is just more fuel to the icing debate. From plays like this and the Kurtis Foster injury, there is more and more support for the NHL to adopt hybrid icing or no-touch icing. Hybrid icing would be a race, but to the faceoff dots instead. If the attacking player gets their first, the play continues. If not, it’s blown dead. No-touch icing is pretty simple; the puck crosses the end line, the play is done, no race, no injuries. Personally I think we’re way overdue for a change to the icing rules. Hybrid icing would be a way to keep the excitement of the race in the game and should deserve a trial. The league is doing that during the preseason. It limits the injuries by having the race end far enough away from the boards, but keeps that same chance element that was in touch icing. If it works, and is shown to reduce the number of injuries, there is no reason the league shouldn’t switch to hybrid icing as soon as possible. Injuries like this are entirely unnecessary and completely preventable and it’s time for the league to do something about it. 

Now, with Pitkanen out for the year, the Hurricanes have a hole to fill on their blueline. Taking that spot, Ron Hainsey. This is good news for a few reasons, mainly because it shows that Hainsey wasn’t blacklisted. Hainsey was one of the major players in the recent lockout, getting a ‘bad cop’ reputation from his dealings with the owners. In fact, he played such a major role during the CBA negotiations that The Hockey News placed him 13^th in their annual list of the 100 People of Power and Influence. That placed him as the second player on the list, behind only Sidney Crosby. He lasted all the way until the eve of training camp without a contract, while plenty of other defensemen received contracts. Another player with a major role during the negotiations was Chris Campoli, placed 99^th on the THN list. Negotiating on an expired contract, he played last year in Switzerland and returned there for this season. His role in the NHLPA essentially got him banished from the NHL. But it’s great to see that wasn’t Hainsey’s fate. Instead, he gets a one-year deal with Carolina. Even with Pitkanen their defense wasn’t that great, so he definitely fills a need. And hopefully, this same drama won’t play over again next offseason.