It’s sickening to watch.

During a Quebec Major Junior Hockey League game on Sunday, Royn-Noranda Huskies centre Patrice Cormier jumped off the bench to join the flow of play. But Cormier — the captain of the junior Team Canada, to our shame — showed no interest in playing the game, despite the fact it was into overtime.

For reasons known only to him, Cormier, like a shark taking aim at its prey, delivered a devastating elbow to the head of unsuspecting Quebec Rempart’s defenceman Mikael Tam.

The elbow isn’t fully visible on the video, which can be seen here. But the end result is sickening to see. Tam went into convulsions while frantic team staff loaded him onto a stretcher and sped him to hospital. Fortunately, Tam appears to be OK.  

Cormier has been suspended indefinitely by the QMJHL, which should be the least of his worries. Let’s hope that Cormier faces something more substantial, like charges in a Canadian court.

The Cormier assault — and that is what it is, an assault — will no doubt bring about another round of handwringing about violence in hockey.  God knows we’ve been through this before. A violent cheap shot occurs, pundits weigh in decrying the state of the sport, the old guard of troglodytes defends the game and the player, and we move on until the next incident.

The Cormier assault is just the latest in a long and ever growing list of on-ice thuggery that has left a trail of seriously injured players in its wake. The NHL’s refusal to properly address the entire issue of deliberate hits to the head (the fact that Todd Bertuzzi still plays hockey after deliberately caving in the head of Steve Moore in one of hockey’s most infamous moments says all you need to know about hockey) is inexcusable. Blows to the head — some accidental, most not — used to be a rarity in hockey.

Now they are anything but. Players are bigger than ever and faster than ever. They wear suits of armour that do as much to inflict damage on opponents as protect the player. The unwritten code of honour is slowly being replaced by the law of the jungle.

The NHL, and all of hockey, cannot afford to ignore this disturbing development. It’s time for hockey to enforce a no tolerance rule on head shots. All it would take is one player to lose a career — not a season, but a career — and deliberate cheap shots to the head would disappear.