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Up until now, Chris Simon has always been the Second Chance Kid and there is only one good reason for that. Unlike all the other palookas that come and go in the NHL, Simon could actually play the game a little.
That ability — to use his hands as well as his fists - made him worth all the time and trouble that Simon ultimately caused his various teams over the past 15 years of uninterrupted NHL employ. It also explained why, at the age of 35, and with seven previous suspensions on his rap sheet, Simon was still out there playing for the New York Islanders last Saturday night and in a position to stomp down hard on the foot of an opponent, the Pittsburgh Penguins' Jarkko Ruutu during an ugly second-period encounter.
The resulting sequence was familiar to any veteran Simon watcher: Apology, contrition, hearing, suspension. This time, Colin Campbell, the league's senior vice president of hockey operations and chief disciplinarian, upped the ante again, suspending Simon for 30 games, a record penalty for an on-ice incident. It marked the second time he'd been banned for an extended period this season, after receiving 25 games for swinging his stick at the head of the New York Rangers' Ryan Hollweg last spring.
Campbell acknowledged that, he in conjunction with the other members of the NHL's hockey operations department, "were all over the map on this one," but ultimately settled on a 30-game ban for two reasons.
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First, to protect the players who face Simon every night ("Chris is a great guy - off the ice," said Campbell. "We were concerned with what's next?); and second, in the hopes that a record-setting penalty might, once and for all, act as a deterrent.
This makes it eight suspensions in total, dating back to the time when Brian Burke held the job of NHL disciplinarian. Presumably, both Burke and Campbell wondered, at different times, if Simon would ever learn — and the answer thus far has been a resounding no.
Campbell was asked: In all the times Simon has worn out the carpet in his office, did he ever promise not to do it again?
"Good question," answered Campbell. "He's very contrite and apologetic. He's very quiet, almost to the point where he's somewhat humiliated by what he's done himself. That's probably the disheartening part of this … he just keeps doing it. You would hope he isn't going to do it again. Maybe he can't help himself, I don't know.
"But he's never actually come out and said, 'I will never do this again.'"
Campbell acknowledged that the thought of a lifetime ban — a popular verdict on the message boards Wednesday - did come up in his conversations with his assistant, Mike Murphy.
According to Campbell, "we were talking about that very fact — has he given up his right, his privilege to play in the NHL?
"We dug out the clips on the things he's done in the past, some of the suspensions he's been involved in and looked at them. I think we've been fairly kind — if that's the proper word — in assessing a low number of games for a couple of those incidents.
"It just hasn't been a deterrent, so what is a deterrent? I'm hoping that both the 30 games, which takes him into February, and the actual help and counseling he's going to get from the (NHL Substance and Behavioural Abuse Program) doctors will help Chris deal with the problem he has. We're not dealing with a guy who doesn't care. We're dealing with a guy who is liked by all his teammates, managers and coaches, but he just snaps — and you can't have that."
No, you can't. Sometimes, recidivist behavior weeds itself out in the NHL. Players of the Jesse Boulerice ilk — who also received a major suspension from Campbell this season — generally disappear into minor-league oblivion because he they're more trouble than their worth.
Simon didn't because in his prime, the combination of his size and deft touch around the net made him unique — someone who could play the role of enforcer at the same time as maybe chipping in a key goal at a pivotal time in the game.
He was on the Colorado Avalanche team that won the 1996 Stanley Cup, the Capitals team that made it to the '98 Stanley Cup final, and the Calgary team that made it to the '04 Stanley Cup final. He signed with the New York Islanders in the summer of 2006 after Ted Nolan — with whom he's had a long personal history — received the head coaching job.
Along the way — parts of 15 seasons as an NHL player — there has always been somebody convinced they can get him to mend his ways and think before he acts, which is generally what gets him into trouble in the first place. The fact that after all these years, the lights still go out from time to time would suggest that it's really just a pipe dream.
Simon's penalty was not so much for the act of stomping Ruutu alone, but for the cumulative effect of all his previous misdemeanors and the fact that nothing ever changes.
Campbell's message — at long last — was that Simon is down to his last NHL chance; and if wants to play again, he better start believing those heartfelt apologies that he issues after every incident. So far, the contrition he'd demonstrated in the past amounted to mostly empty words and promises. That won't be enough to save him the next time around.
