During the first intermission of game three Don Cherry brought up an interesting angle when discussing the crushing Aaron Rome hit on Nathan Horton. Clearly Rome hit him late, and he’ll likely get suspended, although with the NHL’s track record you never know. Grapes brought up an idea that I think has some merit.

Grapes mentioned that the Bruins shouldn’t be punished by only having 17 skaters for the rest of the game due to Horton’s injury. He admitted it would be massive change in the rules, but it makes sense.

If a team loses a player due to a hit that results in a major penalty, should the team of the injured player be allowed to dress one of their extra skaters?

I say yes.

Now before you start pounding your keyboard harder than some "unbiased" scribes in Boston and Vancouver have been pounding their chest during this series hear me out.

We are talking about dressing the 13th forward or 7th defenseman, both players that the coaching staff felt prior to the game weren’t good enough to help their team win. It’s not like the team has their first line player in the pressbox and they forgot to put him in the lineup.

If a team loses a D-man due to a dirty hit, you can argue that playing five D-men for an extended period of time is worse punishment than killing off a five minute penalty, so it could help the team whose player was on the receiving end of a dirty hit.

Do you honestly think a player is going to fake an injury so a guy who has been sitting in the dressing room or pressbox, and might be cold (muscles) can come downstairs and play better?

Outside of this being a massive change to how we are used to watching hockey, what negative do you see happening? Keep in mind I don’t buy into the "faking an injury" argument, since this change could only occur on a five minute penalty. The likelihood of this happening isn’t very high, so it’s not like we’d see this every week, and that’s why I don’t think it is that bad of an idea.

For the past month I’ve been avoiding broken glass, dead porcupines, clowns who think driving close to the shoulder is funny and numerous photo radar trucks parked on the shoulder of Henday while training for the MS Bike Tour that goes this Saturday. My ass is now tough enough to handle the 190 KM ride, and I’m very happy the NHL elected not to have a weekend game, so I won’t miss any of the action.

If you want to help fight MS you can do so my donating to my cause. I’ve built the Ultimate Sports Fan Package and you can win it if you donate $100 for an entry. If you donate $200 you get two entries and so on. We only have 28 entries left if you want in. Here’s the entire package that one lucky person will win this Thursday:

*****UPDATE…We have reached out limit of 75 entries, so thanks for all of those who donated.***