No One Likes A Faker
To address the lowest kickoff return rate in NFL history during the 2023 season and an unacceptable injury rate on kickoffs prior to that, NFL clubs have approved a new kickoff rule for the 2024 season.The Dynamic Kickoff Rule.
To speed up the game, tennis implemented the serve clock and baseball instituted a pitch clock, both references in my post Stop the Clock. Basketball introduced the 3 point line, giving more points for a more difficult task.
In 2015 the NHL introduced a new rule, which I am sure die hard hockey fans had been begging for. However, before I address the rule let me say, hockey and soccer are essentially the same sport. Yes, hockey permits the use of your hands but you can never pass it that way. However, other than using your feet as opposed to a stick they are essentially the same sport. Hockey really is just soccer on steroids. Or soccer is hockey on quaaludes Either way they are very similar. In one area though, the NHL has taken steps to stop a certain player behavior.
We call it flopping. It is when a player tries to extract as much sympathy as possible from the referee. In soccer we see it all of the time. Platers milking a touch or a bump or push in order to, as a 4 year old might say, “get them in trouble.” We as spectators see it all of the time. It is a professional athlete acting like a 4 year old. It is almost comical. Soccer players rolling around screaming having barely been touched just so they get some sort of advantage.
The second preliminary comment is that hockey players are from the toughest athletes there are. I recognize there are other athletes that are tough, namely rugby players and football players. However, there are few sports in which a player gets four teeth knocked and they stop the bleeding and the player goes right back in. Traveling at an average of 25 mph they will slam someone else into the boards and they will just keep playing.
On to the rule. In 2015 the NHL introduced Rule 64:1 says: It is sometimes called “diving” but more often referred to as “embellishment.”
Any player who blatantly dives, embellishes a fall or a reaction, or who feigns an injury shall be penalized with a minor penalty under this rule. A goalkeeper who deliberately initiates contact with an attacking player other than to establish position in the crease, or who otherwise acts to create the appearance of other than incidental contact with an attacking player, is subject to the assessment of a minor penalty for diving / embellishment.
In an age where more and more sports are moving away from human mistakes by utilizing technology to get the call right, (the subject of a future blog) this rule is another moment of the subjective and critically important role of the referee, linesmen or umpire. And because it is completely subjective and is not a reviewable or a challengeable call.
One disclaimer: As a true NY Rangers fan I naturally dislike the Boston Bruins and in particular there are a few players that I dislike by extension. Some players have earned my ire because of their dirty tactics, like when Chase Utley breaks up the double play and Rubén Tejada’s leg, with a dirty slide on October 10, 2015. (At the time it was legal and because of this one play it is now illegal. Another great example of how the rules change.)
That is not why I dislike so many of the Bruins. I just dislike them because they are just so good, and therefore, I have to look for other reasons to hold something against them. One such player is Brad Marchand. He is very talented and it sticks in my throat to even say that. Yet he is still unbelievably dirty. However, for me the most distasteful aspect of his game is when he flops, fakes it (I’ll come back to this at the end) embellishes.
Most of the time the embellishment call is missed. Last year (2024) in the second game of the playoff series between Boston and Toronto there was a scuffle with 6:03 remaining in the game. Ilya Lyubushkin was called for roughing against Charlie Coyle and in responding Charlie Coyle was called for roughing against Illya Lyubushkin and since neither drew blood (a great detail in sports rules that should be implemented across all sport) they were each only penalized for 2 minutes. Then the funniest thing happened. As Andreas Lillhannus points out “And as always, Brad Marchand found himself in the center of attention late in the game, Marchand fell down, hoping to draw another penalty and once again take the man advantage. He is known for such shenanigans and nobody cares. For a great article about these few minutes click here. One of the people who trolled Marchand on social media said, ”Is he a soccer player,”
When we were children, nobody received a participation trophy. You played hard and did your best and the reward was your effort. You weren’t a loser if you left it all out there on the field even if you lost. Many times you could hear a student explaining to a teacher during recess, “he’s faking it, I barely touched him.” Or the shortened version, “faker.” It was our way of calling out a guy for crocodile tears. Presumably the idea of crocodile tears comes from the belief that crocodile shed tears while consuming their prey. I’ve never gotten close enough to notice, nor do I plan to, yet it does sound like an appropriate use of the term when it comes to Marchand.
We have all heard the Aesop’s Fable of the boy who cried wolf. That is the danger of crying so often no one believes you is the reason why the embellishment rule is so important. Sport can be dangerous. To quote A Few Good Men “people die.” It is why the equipment can only go so far to protect the player.
To throw in one more cliche in an already saturated with cliches blog, we know the squeaky wheel gets the oil. We know the more you complain the more attention you get but that is not an endearing quality. The player who is always saying look at me, look at me is rarely the favorite.
If you watch the clip above of Utley and Tejada, you will note the stoicism of Tejada. He does not yell and scream. He doesn’t demand an apology or take out an ad in the NY Times. He rolls over, they put his leg in an air cast and cart him off. He never returned to the player he was. But as Peyton Manning once said in a MasterCard commercial to a barista who was burned by steam, “Shake it off Tommy, rub a little dirt on it.” The player we most admire is as Time watches used to say, they take a licking and keep on ticking.” I had a boss who used to say, “cowboy up.” Which meant just get back to it. In football they say, “next man up.” My brothers would say, “put your big girl …” Well you get the idea. No one likes a faker.