Kovacevic: Need for Sestito a sad symptom

Brief and to the Point ...

Tom Sestito's presence on the Penguins' roster is worth a bristle, absolutely. One would hope that, in this increasingly enlightened era of professional sports, the day would have come that no team would need to pay someone primarily to pound someone else senseless.

But the NHL isn't there yet. Gary Bettman isn't there yet. Maybe most important, the general managers to whom he outrageously delegates the duty of determining what's right and wrong in the game aren't there yet.

So when the Penguins head over to Columbus later this week, yes, you'd better believe they'll be taking along Big Tom, and that this time he'll be bracing for a lot more than a mere pillow fight. Sestito will renew the threats to the Blue Jackets' Brandon Dubinsky that he already made public on this site. He'll stare down Dubinsky from warmups to the final buzzer. And if Dubinsky somehow still doesn't get the message and commits the latest in a litany of cheap shots to Sidney Crosby, he'll have to answer to Sestito's knuckles.



It's awful. All of it. But don't blame the Penguins. Certainly don't blame Sestito. Or for that matter, even the consistently deplorable behavior of Dubinsky:



All of what's being discussed here, these are mere symptoms.

The root cause and, thus, the real problem is that the NHL has suspended Dubinsky once. And by once, I mean ever. It was for that cross-check up there.

And the policy is pretty much the same across the board, no matter who's the guilty party or the target. A shot to the head will get, most likely, a game or two. At the most, it's three or four.

My goodness, this reckless, vicious hit by the Lightning's Anton Stralman on the Jets' Bryan Little last month left ended Little's season with a cracked vertebrae in his neck, and it didn't draw a suspension of any kind:



So this is how it goes: The next time the Lightning and Jets meet, Stralman could be the one leaving the arena on a stretcher, and both teams will brace for the worst while the NHL does little more than hope for the best. That's it. That's the system.

What's most mind-numbing is that it all could be ended with two simple steps:

1. Make all offending players responsible for hits to the head.

It'll be like high-sticking. No one asks if a player meant to high-stick someone. If you do it, it's two minutes. If you do it and draw blood, it's four. There's nothing at all about intent. No mind-reading required. If you can't control your stick, you go to the box.

Well, apply the same to hits to the head. Make players more conscious, more careful. Take all the ambiguity out of it, and take away the referees' leverage to determine what was nasty and what was an accident.

2. Increase tenfold the suspensions for those violating the rule.

Dubinsky would have been cured of his Dubinsky-ness a long time ago had he sat out dozens of games and lost tens of thousands of dollars in game checks. We saw that first-hand with Matt Cooke in Pittsburgh. He went from outright villain to teddy bear almost overnight. It would work with anyone. Even Zac Rinaldo.

Either that, or hey, just make sure the Columbus ice crew is up to speed on how to scrape blood off the ice Friday night.

• The Penguins are terrible in day games. Except they're 5-4 when faceoff is before 6 p.m.

The Penguins can't beat teams in their division. Except they're 9-6-2 inside the Metro, including 8-4-1 under Mike Sullivan.

The Penguins need to shoot the puck more. Except their average of 32.6 shots per game ranks No. 1 in the NHL.

The Penguins should have kept James Neal because he's more productive than Patric Hornqvist. Except that Hornqvist has 43 points to Neal's 40 in Nashville.

The Penguins scratched Derrick Pouliot in Newark because they have a pattern of burying young defensemen. Except that Olli Maatta, a year younger and from the same draft class, plays every game and was just guaranteed $24 million over the next six years. And that Brian Dumoulin, only two years older, will be next in line.

Just your regular reminder that not everything is what we think. There's so, so much of the last-bad-thing-I-saw syndrome when observing sports. I'm guilty of it myself a ton.

• Exhibits A, B and C of how far hockey analytics need to climb to catch up with those in football and especially baseball: The Penguins' best player in 2014-15 in the oft-cited statistic called Corsi For Percentage (CF%) was Chris Kunitz. Unless you count the Pittsburgh-only figures for Ian Cole and David Perron.

Kunitz, Cole and Perron. I kid you not.

When those are the results, the data is insufficient or the formula is flawed. It's got to be one of the two. If a baseball statistic ever misfired that badly -- let's say that, oh, Sean Rodriguez were identified as the Pirates' best player for a full season -- it would be abolished by the entire community within cyber-seconds.

I'll say it again: The efforts being made in hockey analytics are both ambitious and admirable. They just don't have the data yet. Hopefully, with the advent of GoPro mechanisms and more expansive video -- like the NFL's wonderful All-22 film that's now available to the public -- that will come soon.

• Have we really reached the point where the NHL's outdoor affairs are now more interesting for the alumni exhibition rather than the real thing?

Sure seems that way. This past month, the elder Avalanche and Red Wings engaged in a strikingly spirited affair at Coors Field, one that pitted old rivals and legit stars. Hockey fans were buzzing across the continent. And now this week, the league announced that its next big outdoor game this October in Winnipeg will feature an alumni game between the old Jets, including Teemu Selanne, against none other than Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Paul Coffey, Jari Kurri and the dynasty Oilers.

As my good friend Gary Lawless eloquently wrote in Manitoba this week, that's akin to Frank Sinatra opening for Justin Bieber:

From Sunday - Legends Hawerchuk, Gretzky, Teemu make Winnipeg's Heritage Classic like Sinatra opening up for Bieber: https://t.co/VJYfcaQ0Wf

— gary lawless (@garylawless) March 7, 2016

Look Peyton is a hall of fame qb who couldn't play dead in a western last year but career over all is astonishing but last year was ?? — DeAngelo Williams (@DeAngeloRB) March 7, 2016

To Mr. Manning pic.twitter.com/R106WnpHGY

— Cam Heyward (@CamHeyward) March 7, 2016