I’ve posted this first part before but in this case it bears repeating:
This is a direct copy-paste from http://www.nhl.com/ice/page.htm?id=64063 , which was my first “hit” on Googling NHL Rule 48:
Rule 48 – Illegal Check to the Head
48.1 Illegal Check to the Head – A lateral or blind side hit to an opponent where the head is targeted and/or the principal point of contact is not permitted.
48.2 Minor Penalty – There is no provision for a minor penalty for this rule.
48.3 Major Penalty – For a violation of this rule, a major penalty shall be assessed (see 48.4).
48.4 Game Misconduct – An automatic game misconduct penalty shall be assessed whenever a major penalty is assessed under this rule.
48.5 Match Penalty – The Referee, at his discretion, may assess a match penalty if, in his judgment, the player attempted to or deliberately injured his opponent with an illegal check to the head.
48.6 Fines and Suspensions – Any player who incurs a total of two (2) game misconducts under this rule, in either regular League or playoff games, shall be suspended automatically for the next game his team plays. For each subsequent game misconduct penalty the automatic suspension shall be increased by one game.
If deemed appropriate, supplementary discipline can be applied by the Commissioner at his discretion (refer to Rule 28).
I have been watching every playoff game that I can (thanks to my family for allowing me to monopolize the television for hours on end for days at a stretch 
) and I happened to be watching the Black Hawks game when Canuck and well-known bad boy Raffi Torres leveled Brent Seabrook behind the Chicago net. I’m embedding a Youtube video of the hit for your review.
I’ll wait while you watch it.
Torres got a two-minute minor for “interference” for this hit. I have several problems with the way the ref and the league handled this play and I’ll lay them out for you one by one.
Problem #1 – The referee:
First, how the hell do you call “intereference” when a player who is handling the puck is checked by an opposing player? No way is that interference. Someone needs to revisit the rule book, I think. What should the call have been? Three guesses and the first two don’t count. That was a major penalty followed by a match call. Go back and read, piece by piece, the definition of the Rule 48 Infraction. Does Seabrook have a responsibility to keep his head up? Yup, he does. Does Torres have the right to put his shoulder into Seabrook’s head regardless? Nope, that is called “targeting the head”.
There is absolutely NO EXCUSE on this one – the ref was RIGHT THERE looking at the play. No WAY do you miss that call.
Problem #2 – The league:
After so many players have been injured you would think that Colin Campbell (I’m starting to think that spelling is not correct anymore – maybe it should be an “o” in there) would have his team be CONSISTENT with dishing out disciplinary action. They aren’t, and it almost seems like the rule book was burned at the end of the regular season because the officials certainly aren’t using it and the league certainly isn’t either. Witness the hit in regular season play that Boston Bruin Daniel Paille put on Dallas Stars Ray Sawada. I’ll wait while you look at that one as well.
Paille was suspended for four games for that hit. Torres, who just returned from a four-game suspension for elbowing Edmonton Oilers’ Eberle in the head, got a walk essentially with that two-minute bullshit interference call.
Hockey will be relegated to “also-ran” status as a sport until the morons running it start cleaning their own house. The rules need to be applied judiciously and equally. It doesn’t matter if it is the first three minutes of a game or the last thirty seconds, it doesn’t matter if it is a regular season game or a playoff game – you have to be CONSISTENT or the players don’t know what to expect and the fans don’t either. The officiating in the NHL has sucked for a long time, for sure – I’ve been watching now for 40+ years. But it has NEVER sucked quite as much as it has this season.
You blew the call on Torres, NHL, just like you’ve successfully blown a lot of the calls this year. I can tell you right now, this is one reason why I won’t buy tickets to a game (besides the fact that I’m not going to take out a second mortgage just to watch a hockey game live). It absolutely infuriates me that I have to explain to my kids that rules are supposed to be applied fairly but that in sports that just doesn’t seem to happen – and that is especially true for the NHL.
The way things have gone this season, I think a change in the officials’ uniforms are in order – let’s do away with the zebra stripes on the shirt and opt for a solid black shirt with a single white vertical stripe down the back.
