January 28th, 2010

I try to leave my hockey fanaticism off the pages of this website, mostly because I try to write to a more general audience here. How successful I am at that I don’t know, what with my specific pop-culture references like Bayonetta and Summer Glau. But when I couldn’t find a home for this article at another venue, I decided I’d slap it down right here at I Hate Humans. If you watch hockey at all you might enjoy it, otherwise there is some great work being done making fun of the iPad elsewhere.

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It’s sickening to read.

Anytime some jackass hockey goon loses his cool and brains an unsuspecting opponent the media come alive. Fashion your harpoons of over-zealous, specious reasoning! Tonight we hunt the great white whale that is on-ice thuggery!

Media buffoonery as it relates to hockey violence is vast and far reaching. Even SEE Magazine, who have no sports section to speak of, was getting in on the act last week editorializing Quebec Major Junior Hockey League star, Patrice Cormier’s vicious elbow to Quebec Rampart’s defenseman Mikael Tam.

If you haven’t seen the hit you can watch it here.

According to SEE, Cormier’s head-shot 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.” I suppose that could look to be the case. The Edmonton Oilers, for example, have been victims of a couple questionable hits already this season, putting the likes of Sheldon Souray and Ales Hemsky on the injured reserved list.

It is worth noting, however, the NHL plays 1230 games every year, not including playoffs. Of all those games how many do you think pass without major incident? In fact, how many hockey games are played each day, professional or otherwise, without injury?

Hockey is an extremely aggressive sport played by hulked out testosterone monsters who eat iron and gravel for breakfast and wield long wooden sticks as tempting weapons. The truly amazing statistic here is how few malicious attacks actually occur.

That is not to say head-shots don’t need to be addressed, but the issue deserves a little perspective. When SEE writes garbage like “blows to the head — some accidental, most not — used to be a rarity in hockey,” it makes me wonder if the writer, who is not named, has ever watched hockey once in his or her entire life.

What about Bill McCreary destroying Wanye Gretzky? Or Pat Quinn elbowing Bobby Orr? Or Messier smacking Thomas Gradin over the helmet with his stick! The debate over violence in hockey is a long, time honored, sensationalist tradition made worse by ill-informed editorials like SEE Magazine’s.

If the columnist had bothered to check he or she would know that the NHL has been looking at head-shots for a long time, there has been no “refusal” to address the issue. You could make a fair argument for the league dragging its feet a little, but realize that head-shots are complicated.

Most head-shots occur during hard body checks; determining whether a player deliberately went head hunting is no easy task for a referee. It is particularly tough when someone like Zdeno Chara delivers the hit; the man stands a foot taller than every other player, of course he’s going to hit their head!

SEE Magazine, though, abandons rationality, calling for career ending disciplinary action as means to curb further goonings. “All it would take is one player to lose a career — not a season, but a career,” the article says.

Predictably the writer points to Todd Bertuzzi as the NHL’s greatest disciplinary failure. The fact that he is still playing says “all you need to know about hockey,” whatever that means.

The column, however, fails to post this one simple statistic, which is that since returning to NHL duty Bertuzzi has not been suspended once. You may not think Bertuzzi learned his lesson, SEE Magazine, but the facts say otherwise.

The truth is the NHL wants to reign in damaging head-shots, but need a balanced, clear rule that respects hockey as the edgy, tough game it is.

As for Cormier, he has since been suspended for the remainder of the QMJHL season, including playoffs. He won’t play another game until fall, which is discipline well served.

Filed under: General by Gregg |