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© Dan4th

The Zdeno Chara/Max Pacioretty hit finally got NHL league officials talking about some comprehensive safety rules. The league is taking a hard-line stance against all hits to the head with the two-game suspensions of both Dany Heatley and Brad Marchand.

The NHLPA is also going to work with the league to make the rinks safer to play in by looking at stanchion padding in Montreal as a result of Max Pacioretty's injury. It can be argued that a lot of this stuff is common sense and should have been done a long time ago. It is showing a lack of concern and appreciation for the players, because without them there would be no NHL. There fore it would seem like the safety of the players should be the league's top concern.

© Dan4th

The Zdeno Chara hit on max Pacioretty in Montreal the other night has caused quite a stir on the NHL news sites and blogs. Much of the chatter has been focused on whether Chara is a dirty player or not, but criticism is also being directed at the National Hockey League itself by none other than the Canadian prime minister.

Air Canada and the NHL players association are other organizations that have complained about how the league handled the incident. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has gone on the defensive by saying that the injury was horrific, and the league is sorry that it happened. Yet he blames it on the fact that hockey is a fast-paced and physical game, and therefore it is unlikely that supplemental discipline would stop these kinds of outcomes from occurring. He also stated that most within the game believe that the incident was handled appropriately.

© 5of7

The NHL League announced that Molson Canadian has obtained exclusive league rights in the beer sponsorship category, including the rights to the "Official Beer of the NHL" designation. In spite of this development, competing brewer Labatt USA, headquartered in Buffalo, made it clear that it would remain the official sponsor of the Sabres.

The competition between these two Canadian beer giants has threatened to spill into court after the league made its announcement. Labatt insists that it has a legal right to continue as the NHL's beverage of choice, as it has been for the last decade, and they assert that an agreement to continue their sponsorship was already in place before the Molson deal, an assertion that the NHL strongly disagrees with. But either way, NHL teams like the Sabres are free to strike individual deals with beer-makers, and they will surely stick with Labatt.