George Parros is useless in his job as senior vice president of the NHL’s ironically named Department of Player Safety. He acts as a human guardrail against prosecuting predators. That apparently was the job description when he was hired following a 474-game NHL career in which the Princeton product picked up 1,092 penalty minutes and engaged in 158 fights (per HockeyFights) while recording 18 goals and 18 assists.

If the NHL is going to go into contortions to excuse a prior offender such as Austin Watson after he charged Tyler Motte and simultaneously thrust himself upward to deliver a headshot with his elbow and shoulder, then the department should be disbanded.

It is as if the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were working in concert with banks and credit card companies.

This isn’t the first time Watson has committed a similar offense. He was suspended for two games for an elbow and shoulder to Boston defenseman Jack Alcahn just last February. That was his second two-game suspension. Motte is all but certainly concussed.

Yet the Department of Player Safety, with full endorsement of the league and Board of Governors, finds a way to legitimize hits to the head by splitting infinitives between initial conduct and secondary conduct as if the brain knows or cares. Truly, it is beyond me why team owners authorize this type of woefully titled supplementary discipline system that increases the likelihood of injury.

I have also long been mystified why the NHL Players’ Association has been an unnamed co-conspirator. The hope here is that Marty Walsh, the new NHLPA executive director, will find reversing the decision a priority. Why does the union reflexively come to the defense of the perpetrator, exclusively, when it comes to supplemental discipline hearings?