Quote:
The NHL must ban fighting
By JACK TODD, Special to The Gazette September 5, 2011
MONTREAL - Enough is enough. It's time to outlaw fighting in hockey, to put an end to the game's goon culture for once and for all.
Wade Belak's death during the NHL's tragic summer, following the deaths of his fellow enforcers Derek Boogaard and Rick Rypien, should be all it takes. Never mind that we can't prove that the deaths of three gladiators in one season are all linked to their roles as NHL fighters - this isn't a connection you can prove in a courtroom.
But this isn't a courtroom. It's real life, where billiondollar sports leagues need to make their decisions based on real human assessments of risk and consequences.
The toll fighting takes on the fighters is too great. The stress is too much, the constant pain, the accumulated affects of too many punches, too many painkillers, too much alcohol mixed with the painkillers.
If nothing else, the needless deaths of these three young men should give Gary Bettman the political tool he needs to overcome the sizable contingent of Neanderthals who still wield a disproportionate weight in NHL circles.
Don Cherry, the loudest of the bunch, has shamelessly exploited the NHL's goon squad for decades while browbeating anyone who suggests that fighting is a cruel, backward and unnecessary interruption to a beautiful game. That Cherry's statements represent a blatant conflict of interest is lost on his supporters - but Cherry's influence is waning, along with those who once suggested that concussions were just a part of the game and hits to the head no big deal.
With Brendan Shanahan bringing to his role a respect Colin Campbell could never command, this is the perfect time for Bettman to act.
Whatever could once be said to justify fighting, it is no longer part of the flow of the game. Fights are staged bouts between paid gladiators which have little or no impact on the game. It's not a matter of Dave Schultz knocking out John Van Boxmeer because Van Boxmeer had the impunity to hit Bobby Clarke.
That sort of intimidation, rightly or wrongly, had an impact on the outcome of hockey games. The Flyers' backto-back Stanley Cups in the 1970s were the direct outcome of the sort of the terror tactics they brought to the ice - and it wasn't until the Canadiens could push back with Pierre Bouchard and Rick Chartraw and others that they were able to reassert their dominance.
Fighters no longer play an integral role. Today, their fights are little more than unwelcome interruptions. They fight, the game is delayed, as often as not there is no clear winner. There is some cheering and posturing, the gloves and helmets are gathered up and the game goes on. What is the point?
I am not immune to the pulse-pounding excitement of a good hockey fight. The whupping Larry Robinson laid on Schultz would have to rank as my most memorable hockey moment, ahead of the Summit Series and everything else, perhaps because I was lucky enough to be at the Forum when it happened.
Fighting has changed and the fighters have changed. When Robinson was embarrassing Schultz, Robinson was a slender 6-foot-3. Zdeno Chara, the nearest thing to Robinson in this era, is 6-foot-9 and 255 chiselled pounds. Look at the footage of him tossing Bryan McCabe around like a rag doll and you have some idea what his opponents are dealing with.
Chara's fight with Raitis Ivanans clearly indicates the risk to today's fighters: Chara threw three, perhaps four punches, the last shattering Ivanans's orbital bone as the big Latvian went down. That punch could have been fatal. One of these days, a punch will kill or permanently injure someone on the ice: these guys are too big, too strong, too fit - and they don't have the minimal protection of boxing gloves.
Too many repeat endlessly the same mantra, "fighting will always be part of the game," as though it results from divine decree or a force of nature that can't be altered.
That is patently ridiculous. All the NHL has to do to end fighting is to outlaw it. Each fight brings an automatic game misconduct and a three-game suspension, more for repeat offenders.
The defenders of fighting will argue that a fast, passionate, violent game somehow requires fighting - but if the NFL and CFL do not allow fighting, then it has no place in hockey. Football is fast, passionate and more violent than hockey, so if those big hulks can coexist on the field without duking it out, so can hockey players.
As long as the NHL permits fighting, it will be a bit bushleague, with one skate in the big-time and the other firmly planted in roller derby. The league is growing up in the way it is beginning to deal in a meaningful way with concussions and the awful toll they take on its talent. (You need look no further than the probable end of Marc Savard's career to know how serious the concussion issue is.)
Now it's time to move on and to put an end to fighting. Call it the Wade Belak Rule if you like. If his death can help bring about an end to fighting in the NHL, then something good might come of what is otherwise a senseless, heartbending tragedy, the death of a father of two young girls at a time that should have been the prime of his life.
jacktodd46@yahoo.com
© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
| Suffice it say... I disagree. |
