by DAVID SHOALTS , The Globe and Mail

The recent rash of frightening hits to the head around the league have the Toronto Maple Leafs head coach and others thinking it is time for a crackdown. Last March, the NHL GMs rejected a proposed rule change from the NHL Players' Association, deciding to stick with the status quo.

"You should not be allowed to target the heads, that is not a clean hit," Wilson said yesterday. He would also like to see a rule take care of the technically legal hits like the blind-side body check by Philadelphia Flyers forward Mike Richards that left Florida Panthers forward David Booth with a concussion.

Wilson said Richards did not come directly at Booth but from the side, where the player could not spot him in his peripheral vision.

"There should be a field-of-vision kind of test put in [a new rule]," Wilson said. "And I still don't like the shoulder [hit] on the head. It didn't look like he was aiming for [Booth's] shoulder."

The Leafs coach said a hit like the one by Andrew Ladd of the Chicago Blackhawks on Matt D'Agostini of the Montreal Canadiens was especially egregious. Last Friday, Ladd caught D'Agostini with his head down and flattened him. He received a major penalty for elbowing, a game misconduct and may get more punishment from NHL director of Hockey operations Colin Campbell.

"He was trying to rip his head off," Wilson said of Ladd. "There's no doubt in my mind he was going right for his head."

Wilson said there is no sense blaming Campbell for being lenient on offenders with supplemental discipline because he is "following the letter of the law and we have to fix that. At some point, somebody's not going to come back for a long, long time from one of these."

Wilson wants a new rule because "I don't want to see guys throwing the puck away when they should be creative," out of fear they will take a big hit.

Wilson also said the GMs should take a look at "the guy sneaking out of the penalty box," to make a hit. "I'm wondering if you step out of the box you can't hit anybody. They say players should know a guy is coming out of the box but sometimes you don't. That's the last thing on your mind," Wilson said.

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