Take A Chill! Spare Us Outrage Over Orr's Clean Hit

The hockey police were at it again this week, fretting and fussing because of injuries sustained by Matt Cullen as a result of an open-ice check he took from Colton Orr at the Garden on Wednesday while cutting across the Rangers zone carrying the puck with his head down.

It was not a hit to the head. It was not an illegal hit, either, despite the illegitimate decision by the four-man officiating crew that originally made no call, but upon seeing Cullen flat on the ice and briefly unconscious, then took the cowardly way out and gave Orr a five-minute major for interference after a lengthy caucus.

NHL VP Colin Campbell's decision not to suspend Orr after a review of the video is evidence enough that no foul had been committed in the collision. Regardless, we were inundated again in the play's aftermath by pleas from the pseudo-intelligentsia for the restoration of "respect" between players; about how even if the check was legal, it was somehow unethical. Of course, the paralysis card was played, as in, "Does someone have to be paralyzed before this stops?"