James Earl Jones as Darth Vader? A+ casting choice. As a karate master? I have some questions. People watch sports movies for different reasons than they do other movies, but casting still matters. Here’s why.

Every sport has a fanbase convinced its athletes are built different. So the internet keeps asking what would happen if you dropped a soccer star into a batter’s box, a basketball alien onto skates, or a baseball flamethrower in front of Derrick Henry. The answer is usually humiliation — and that proves almost nothing. Great athletes are not cheat codes. They’re specialists who have spent their lives getting absurdly good at one very specific thing.

The NHL Department of Player Safety is a meticulously built monument to indifference. It’s not a circus; it’s a vending machine for predation presided over by George Parros. Every dismissed hit adds another charred stick to the stack. We’ve traded the "Code" for a conference call and capped justice at five games which reads to us as an administrative love tap for avoidable damage. The system is a tired re-run where consequences bear no relation to harm. Until we abolish the phone and demand reciprocity, the Department o Player Safety is a hollow relic.