from Sean McIndoe of The Athletic,

There are lots of ways we could improve the NHL rulebook, and you can probably come up with a few suggestions of your own. But here’s one that’s relatively simple: Let’s go through and remove most of those references to injury.

The word appears 75 times in the most recent edition of the rulebook. We don’t need to get rid of all of them, as some are about stopping play when somebody is seriously hurt, or allowing special equipment to protect a player with an existing injury or what to do when a player is physically unable to serve a penalty or take a penalty shot. Those are all fine and necessary, but they’re the exceptions. Most of the references fall into the same category: determining what kind of penalty should be called.

Is the player hurt? The penalty gets more severe. Is he OK? Then a two-minute minor is probably enough.

Most fans are familiar with the distinction when it comes to high-sticking — two minutes in most cases, but it becomes four if there’s an injury (which usually but not always means blood, even though that wasn’t in the rulebook until a few years ago). The injury distinction shows up for other penalties, too. Charging, slashing, elbowing, spearing, interfering and even hooking have differing levels of penalty based on whether there’s an injury.

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