But this time it’s different.

Randy Jones received a two game suspension today for his hit from behind on Patrice Bergeron on Saturday night, making him the third member of the Philadelphia Flyers to be suspended this season. However, if you watch the replays, you’d see that this hit is significantly different from the incidents involving Steve Downie and Jesse Boulerice. It seemed like quite a harmless play to begin with but ended with Bergeron suffering a concussion and a broken nose.

For one thing, Bergeron stops up right before Jones’ hits him, which is probably rather unexpected. His knees bent in such a way that he wouldn’t be able to brace himself for the hit that was incoming, and angled his head toward the boards. It was a dirty hit that justified a boarding penalty but Jones probably wasn’t trying to injure his opponent, something that was probably taken into account in determining the length of his suspension. Also, unlike both Downie and Boulerice, Randy Jones doesn’t have a track record as a dirty player.

However, this brings up a couple issues. First of all, good on the NHL for being able to tell the difference between a physical but questionable hit and a hit with intent to injure. No one wants to see the physical element of the game removed from hockey. It’s just the intent to injure that we need to deal with.

Secondly, this is the third incident involving the Flyers organization and we’re barely ten games into the young 07/08 season. I gave Philadelphia the benefit of the doubt after the second but now that there’s a third, we have to question the responsibility of the the team as a whole. The fact that this continues to go on means that the coaching staff and management aren’t doing enough internally to deal with these sorts of problems and let’s face it, every team has enough Steve Downie’s and Jesse Boulerice’s to go around. What’s to stop any team from bringing up a bunch of farmhands to injure the league’s top stars? While I hope such a rule never comes into play, there needs to be some sort of punishment not only for repeat offending players but also repeat offending teams.

It’s a shame that these suspensions are what people associate with the Philadelphia Flyers so far this season because they have really been a big success story. I mean, who would’ve thought that last year’s bottom feeders would be leading a division with New York, Pittsburgh and New Jersey?