NHL Department of Player Safety has stopped caring about player safety

In the third period of the Florida Panthers' 5-2 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday night, Panthers defenseman Seth Jones appeared to hit Lightning forward Brandon Hagel in the head with a pretty blatant elbow that knocked him out for the remainder of the game. It is the type of play that in years past might have resulted in some form of supplemental discipline and likely a suspension.

Jones did not even have a disciplinary hearing for the hit and will face no further punishment.

It continues a concerning trend from the DoPS where it seems to no longer have any interest in doing the job it was created to do. 

Department of Player Safety has dramatically cut down on punishments

The Department of Player Safety was first created at the start of the 2011-12 season in an effort to cut down on — and hopefully eliminate — blatant hits to the head. Given the lawsuits the NHL was facing for head injuries, as well as some truly terrifying open-ice hits that left prominent players badly injured (and some careers ruined — like former Boston Bruins forward Marc Savard), it had to do something.

Former NHL player and Hockey Hall of Famer Brendan Shanahan was put in charge of the department initially, and he ruled with an iron fist the first year-and-a-half on the job, setting a tough standard and handing out significant suspensions and fines. The hope was that players would learn the standards the league expected for hits, adapt to them and cut down on illegal hits to the head and plays that could result in significant injury.

Eventually, however, the NHL's general managers and board of governors became annoyed at the impact that was having on physical play and the number of games players were missing due to suspension. And then the suspensions started to reduce, as well as the severity of the suspensions in terms of number of games. 

Then Shanahan left the league office to join the Toronto Maple Leafs front office.

Now the department is run by George Parros, a former NHL player whose only claim to fame in the league was for fighting people. Putting that sort of player in charge of player safety seems like an oxymoron, but the league went through with it.