NEW YORK – The National Hockey League has been laboring to develop a coherent response to overly aggressive contact in the game. Brendan Shanahan was named to the position of the league’s disciplinary response and his decisions (and non-decisions) seemingly are reported on daily. The most recent was the two-game suspension of Jordin Tootoo of the Nashville Predators for charging. Tootoo will forfeit $13,513.52 in salary for those two games.
Despite Shanahan’s decisions and the clarity in his defense of the decisions there remains an uncomfortable number of incidents and rulings.
Why have the NHL’s responses to on-ice hits not resulted in a decrease?
Pro Hockey News has discussed this issue internally for some months and is now preparing a series of articles to examine the on-ice events and the NHL’s responses through a program evaluation assessment. Two specific functions of any program evaluation are the process evaluation and outcomes evaluation ( ref , ref , ref ). Being outside the NHL system, the process evaluation will put aside. Pro Hockey News is not privy to the internal workings of the NHL and will not comment here.
The outcomes evaluation can be reviewed with an assessment of the number of on-ice incidents and the decisions handed down by the NH offices in New York. This is a straightforward quantitative evaluation where numbers can be researched and used to determine trends in on-ice penalties, severity of each and the response from the NHL.
To assist in the outcomes evaluation, Pro Hockey News will develop a logic model ( ref ) and work through the model to provide our readers with a reasoned assessment of the impact of the NHL’s disciplinary responses to illegal contact in its game.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) uses process and outcomes evaluation to measure public health program success. For these types of efforts, there are six basic steps in developing a program evaluation strategy to address a public health concern.
1. Engage stakeholders , including those involved in program operations; those served or affected by the program; and primary users of the evaluation.
2. Describe the program , including the need, expected effects, activities, resources, stage, context and logic model.
3. Focus the evaluation design to assess the issues of greatest concern. Consider the purpose, users, uses, questions, and methods.
4. Gather credible evidence to strengthen evaluation judgments and the recommendations that follow.
5. Justify conclusions by linking them to the evidence gathered. Justify conclusions on the basis of evidence using these five elements: standards, analysis/synthesis, interpretation, judgment and recommendations.
6. Ensure use and share lessons learned with these steps: design, preparation, feedback, follow-up and dissemination.
The first step in this process will be the development of the logic model in the next article. The focus of this model is on the outcome of protecting the invaluable resource of the NHL, its players. Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins recently returned to the ice after a on-ice hit in the 2010/11 season which resulted in a concussion and months of post concussion symptoms. The Penguins were without their star player and the league was without its marquee name for those months.
Pro Hockey News welcomes discussion from this point forward on the issue illegal hits and the NHL’s response. This is the first in a multi-part series with the next installment published within the next two weeks.
Contact Lou.Lafrado@prohockeynews.com
Editor’s Note: This outcomes evaluation is not intended to provide any advice or guidance to the NHL. The effort on the part of Pro Hockey News is intended to provide its readers with a framework for discussing the issues of illegal hits and their outcomes. The author is a program evaluator working in public health promotion and disease prevention.
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