NHL move to help Leafs' tough guy
By Steve Milton
Hamilton Spectator
September 17, 2002

Take a moment to digest this concept, because it looks like an oxymoron:

The NHL is cracking down on crime, and that should help Tie Domi.

What's next, anti-smoking legislation which benefits tobacco companies? An all-sugar diet to lose weight?

This is Tie Domi, to whom we're referring here, the same Domi to whom 150 penalty minutes represents a passive season. The truculent Maple Leaf winger who enters this year on a high, but who entered last season on suspension.

"I don't care what people think, I know what this is going to do, it's going to help me," Domi says of the new war on off the-puck interference.

When the NHL decided to bear down on the hooking and holding particularly in the neutral zone, it wasn't just the finesse players who were meant to capitalize. In their briefing to the media league officials also cited, by actual name, Domi.

For all of his primary responsibilities as an enforcer, the 32-year old pride of Belle River is also a fast, determined forechecker who arrives in the opposition end, to paraphrase Freddy Shero, quickly and in ill-humour. Since this new emphasis on interference rules was designed to put the sustained forecheck, and subsequent turnovers, back into the game, it has to enhance Domi's repertoire.

"I'm going to be able to get in there and forecheck and create something offensively," Domi agrees. "Once you are known as a forechecker, a guy that gets in there and bangs, they know to hold you up. Especially in the playoffs, I was really held up a lot"

With ample reason. If you're on the other team, Domi building a head of steam through the neutral zone is a scary thing, and we don't mean the part about the head. His speed and force can do some real damage to suddenly-jittery defencemen in the offensive zone if he's allowed to advance unimpeded. Ergo, he has been impeded.

In the forechecking milieu, Domi has had more illegal things done to him than he's done to others. And yes, we know that seems hard to swallow. But at one end, he's fast and self sacrificing enough to warrant attention and at the other, he gets too much attention from referees to get away with a lot of overt clutching and stick work. When Domi gets overt, it's rarely anything so mild as a tug or a hook. "I'm watched pretty much," said Domi, embarking on a new three-year deal. "If I do too much of that, I get called. If you look at my stats, I don't get too many two-minute penalties.

I can't afford to take two-minute penalties."Like all of his teammates, Domi is worried that there will not be a smooth and uniform transition to the new emphasis on opening up the game. He hopes players and officials "adapt collectively, but if everyone's not on the same page and we don't know what's going on, it's going to be disastrous.

"But as a tough guy with decent speed, stiffer rules to penalize those who can't or won't skate with their checks will certainly help him: if the rules are called as advertised.

Domi says that, prior to this season, when the puck was dumped into the offensive zone and there was a defender anywhere near him at the blueline, he was interfered with, "every time - By the stick"

"I'm actually excited about (the crackdown). Hopefully it sticks. The other thing that's going to help me, besides the forechecking, is that I like to crash the net, and they're not going to be able to stop me like they used to, with their stick between the legs. Now they have to give you the space to go to the net.

"So I'm going to go there a lot hang around, maybe get some more garbage goals."

He laughs self effacingly, but it's not that outlandish a suggestion, not if the in-season whistles march to the same beat as the off season rhetoric. Of course, there's always the possibility that Domi, as a repeat offender in other crimes of the game, won't get the benefit of the calls. If he is illegally restrained, some referees might not view that as harshly as if, say, Tomas Kaberle had been the victim.

"I think I'll get the calls" Domi said. "We have to make everybody honest here. Not just the players, the officials have to be accountable too, and I think the league is going to make sure of that. If they don't, it won't take long to send the tapes in. Pat (Quinn) is pretty good at that"