If you ever felt the need/urge to crash Google's servers, the easiest way to do it would be to search "NHL + dumb idea". One of the dumbest ideas is the instigator penalty.

Normally, this debate comes up after a player gets hurt by a cheap shot, and passions are high. Since this hasn't happened in a couple weeks, it can be said in a rational state.

The instigator penalty has to go.

The league itself showed they don't really have any regard for it last year during the Finals, when Evgeni Malkin jumped Henrik Zetterberg in the waning moments of a game, got the instigator (which, since it was at the end of the game, carried an automatic one-game suspension), and Colin Campbell threw out Malkin's suspension before Malkin was in the locker room. If the league is saying the penalty doesn't matter, why does it exist?

The idea is supposed to be that it prevents enforcers from jumping in once something happens between two other players. But you know what? That's what the enforcer's job is. Does anyone seriously think Malkin would have pulled that bullshit had he known he would have had to deal with one of the larger (and tougher) Red Wings players?

This is what made hockey great. It was a self-policing sport. Nobody would go around cheapshotting Wayne Gretzky knowing they'd have to then be held accountable by Dave Semenko. Guys like Stu Grimson and Al Secord made damn sure nothing happened to Denis Savard. We can go back in Hawks history to the early 1940s, and see John Mariucci serving as a deterrent to anyone taking a run at the Bentleys.

It's a big sheet of ice, with a lot going on. The officials can't see it all. Having a deterrent out there would keep the game clean. Is it any coincidence that it seems once a week we're seeing someone get plowed into the boards from behind, or sticks going up into faces? There's no consequence for anyone's actions. The instigator gets called so infrequently, anyway - even less now that Wayne Gretzky isn't yelling at the refs looking for it everytime a glove hits the ice.

Look, it would take years, and cost thousands of lives to undo every dumbassed thing Gary Bettman has done. But this one is easy, and it's a no-brainer.

Abolish the instigator rule.