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March 2000
A Black Eye for an Eye for an Eye....
Legal Beagles...
Stand-Up Guy Award...
Site news...
Archive
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A Black Eye for an Eye for an Eye What's there to say that hasn't been said? Marty McSorley's February 21st stick assault
on Donald Brashear brought into sharp focus one of the ugliest on-ice problems plaguing hockey,
one that's grown insidiously nastier over the last several years, and has been especially virulent
since this season commenced. We're talking not just reckless and malicious stickwork, but the
wholesale increase in dirty and dangerous play and the widespread disregard among players
for the skulls, brains, vertebrae, eyesight, and general well-being of opposing players.
For once, though, the media got it right -- even if the NHL continued to stare blankly, as if
itself the victim of too many severe concussions. McSorley's sociopathic lack of impulse control
was paraded across North American televisions, not just on the late-night sports round-up but
in the national news, yet again still another black eye for hockey, yet another PR disaster, yet
another embarrassment for all of us who love the game. National and local newsreaders across
the US winced and clucked and shook their heads after the tape rolled, and expressed revulsion
and dismay at the barbarity, and it didn't matter that most of them didn't know whether a hockey
game was played in periods, quarters, or innings and had never heard of Gordie Howe; they
were right to be appalled.
More informed opinions -- those of the best hockey writers and commentators in North
America, and even those of the normally most obtuse among sport's fifth estate, from Roy
MacGregor to Jack Todd to Damien Cox, Jim Kelley, Cam Cole, Dave Kindred and hundreds
more -- also hit the nail on the head, as it were, displaying a keen grasp of the situation and
offering wise recommendations you must already have read elsewhere; that left only the league
and the Players Association, macho clowns like Don Cherry and Barry Melrose, superstar-and-
statesman-turned-league-shill Wayne Gretzky, and the 12-year-old boys who spew venom in
internet hockey chatrooms to try to defend McSorley, shift the blame, or claim there's
no problem at all.
McSorley's apologists went through contortions to hate the sin, not the sinner, professing
confusion and disappointment that such an act could be committed by McSorley, the poor honest
plugger who just snapped without any warning. Previously suspended nine times by the NHL
(and more in the minors) for dirty and dangerous play, including five times specifically for stick-
related mayhem -- this is a "character guy"? When McSorley joined the Oilers back in 1985
and donned sweater 55, Edmonton assistant coach Bob McCammon told him, "I see you finally
got a number to match your I.Q." Anybody who's followed the NHL for the past 17 years
knew McSorley was a ticking time bomb, overdue to go off again, a filthy player with the
track record to prove it. This is a guy who, if hockey were run properly, would have been
thrown out of the game years ago.
Now, with the Brashear incident, and
the NHL back in the US media spotlight the
only way it knows how to get there, the league
had not only the opportunity, but the obligation,
to make a statement of unprecedented severity.
Sure, league detention-room proctor Colin
Campbell had one hand tied by the precedent of
shameful lenience the NHL has granted earlier,
similar incidents -- but in McSorley, the league
and the increasingly idiotic Players Association
had the perfect material to fry up as an object
lesson, and upon which to establish a radically new and longer precedent. McSorley, 36, was
ready to hang up the skates, and his bayonet and brass knuckles, a year ago, until the Bruins
rang his phone and gave him the chance to collect one last fat paycheck by spending a year
clubbing people for a lame second-division side. There are plenty of younger, more skilled,
and far less expensive thugs out there; nobody was going to invite McSorley to camp next fall.
The league-record 23-game suspension that Campbell handed down effectively put an end not
just to McSorley's season but to his NHL career, no matter what Marty's buddy Gretzky
would like to think. Adding a full season to the punishment wouldn't have affected McSorley,
but it would have been a smart counter to the horrendous PR generated by McSorley's baseball
swing to Brashear's temple, and provided a precedent on which Campbell could stand when
handling future incidents. The NHLPA would have had no reason to argue, beyond their sheer
perversity in this area anyway, and would have garnered as much public sympathy for a protest
as they would have by arguing to legalize drunk driving.
The public, including most knowledgable, right-thinking hockey fans, have finally had it up to
here with this stuff and want to see some heavy justice handed out to put a stop to it. They're
as sick as we are of seeing hockey's best and brightest -- the guys who put fans in the seats and
lift us out of those seats every time the puck's on their sticks -- sidelined for days and weeks
while lumbering bush-league Australopithicenes roam the ice. They're sick of seeing clean, gifted
stars -- Lemieux, LaFontaine, Kariya, Modano, Nieuwendyk, Jagr, and a hundred other honest
worthies -- having their health threatened and careers ended. And not as the result of tough, solid,
physical play, but by the malicious slashing, lethal head-hunting, unconscionable hits from behind,
and all the nasty, irresponsible garbage that would have been considered cheap, dirty, cowardly,
over-the-line play in any era of hockey's long rough-&-tumble history, but which the NHL
seems to have approved as its mise-en-scene this season almost since opening night.
Why's that happened? As we discussed over a year ago in The Death of Hockey, the
reasons are manifold, but you can start with an NHL administration that's clueless at the very
top, has no affection for or understanding of the game whatsoever, and neither the insight nor
the inclination to do what's right and necessary now that the mess they've created has gotten
out of hand -- and with the greed-driven overexpansion that's brought about, flooding NHL
ice surfaces with hundreds of relatively talentless bushers who have no familiarity with and
no respect for the guys they're playing against.
That's why the sticks are up, not because of "all the new restrictions on fighting" (last time
we checked, a fight still got you five minutes, not an ejection). And just as the league failed to
respond, until drowning in bad PR and threatened with litigation, to the nightly bench-clearing
melees of the '70s, it's the league's utter failure now to respond to the stick problem, grown
though it has over the last several years, that's kept the sticks up. That, and the NHLPA's
Bizarro World insistence on protecting the Association members who are maiming their fellow
Association members.
So you can forget about the lame arguments hurled forth by mayhem's few remaining
advocates, hockey's answer to the Flat Earth Society. There's the junk about how the timidly
stricter discouragements against fighting have caused the increase in stickwork -- but of course
the two principals had already fought earlier in the game in which McSorley brained Brashear;
it was in fact the fight itself, and the fact they hadn't been ejected as a result, that instead
directly led to the stick attack -- one more pebble in the mountain of evidence that violence
doesn't prevent violence, it just produces more of it. There's the hooey about how the presence
of a couple of provoked-at-a-glance cement-heads on every roster discourages dirty play and
keeps the game "honest" -- but of course it's the hacks and the goons who initiate most of the
thuggery, the guy responsible for injuring somebody is rarely the one targeted for revenge, and
if he is, that's a reward, not a deterrent, since his whole raison d'etre is brawling anyway. And
there's the crap about "acceptance of risk," about how every guy out there takes a knowing
and willing chance of injury -- but, need we really add?, that while we all accept the risk of
bruises, sprains, missing teeth, maybe even the odd broken bone or torn ACL in a high-velocity
heavy-contact game, nobody who isn't certifiable goes out there willing to accept brain damage
or quadraplegia from cheap shots intended to injure.
The pros, and first and foremost the NHL, are the role model for every level of hockey
below them -- juniors, high school, rec league, pee-wee, all of it. If the NHL brass disagrees,
we suggest they tell Jared Flick, the 15-year-old bantam player who was left dizzy and speech-
impaired from a severe concussion, suffered in a nearly identical stick attack in a game in
Windsor the same week McSorley cracked Brashear. And if the NHL wants to claim permanent
injury is an acceptable risk, we'd like to see them explain that first to Neal Goss, still paralyzed
from a sneak attack in a Chicago area high school game back in November.
Sickest and most hilarious of all is the
NHL's admonition that "it can police itself."
The league's proven a thousand times over
without exception, through at least its last four
administrations, that it's in fact completely
incapable of policing itself. So let the cops
and the courts get involved. It took that
threat to quell the Reign of Terror that ruled
hockey in the mid-1970s, and it looks like
it may require legal action once more to
compel the NHL to get its house in order.
Which leaves only that one vacuous, oft-
repeated question: "where do you draw the
line?" As good as anything we read or heard
on the subject in the wake of the McSorley
incident was the conversation between
actor/director, honest hockey fanatic and
avid rec-league player Tim Robbins and
host and casual hockey fan David Letterman
on Letterman's Late Show. Letterman was
aghast at the deed, and the more knowledgable Robbins even more animated and appalled.
At a loss as to how to deal with it, Letterman tried to boil it down: "Hockey's a violent game.
I mean, it's always been a violent game, right? And McSorley, apparently, 'went over the line.'
And I guess the problem is where to draw that line!" Robbins had no difficulty discerning it.
He stared blankly, took a beat, extended his right hand: "... hockey ... " -- and then extended
his left: "... assault." Really, what's left to be said? -- KER / JZK
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Legal Beagles
Last month here we made noises about making a formal challenge, under the articles of
the North American Free Trade Agreement, to the economic disparity between US-based and
Canadian-based NHL franchises. Big talk, no action? A fair charge. But our threat wasn't
a hollow one. Personal and professional obligations have delayed further consultation with our
legal advisors and postponed our planned action, but we aren't backing down, and that action
is still imminent. Let the NHL be warned: we will be getting the Office of NAFTA involved
sometime during the playoffs, probably before April is over.
On another legal front, here's some happy news to report: Jeff Spring, webmaster of the
rip-snorting NoGoal.com, tells us the NHL has apparently backed down and dropped its
ugly, absurd lawsuit against him, his website, and his fine line of NoGoal products, which we
detailed here back in September. "The NHL has not contacted me about any further legal
action," Spring told us, "so I have assumed that the threat is over. The legality of the products
are not really in question because of section 107 of the copyright law, so it appears as if
the NHL was blowing smoke all along."
Huzzah! Chalk another one up for David over Goliath. In his own NoGoal.com editorial
this month, Spring declares even more confidently, "The NHL got scared. We beat them. It
was NO GOAL and they know it. To sue us just brings attention to their mistake on CNN.
It would be a PR disaster for them to sue us because we refused to back down -- not now,
not ever. I was hoping they would sue because it would be the quickest way to bring
this message to the world."
"Besides," he adds, "it is legal for anyone to criticize anything. It is a First Amendment right
and you can use copyrighted materials to comment or criticize. Know your rights before they
get taken away. It's called fair use and is a very useful law that protects us all."
NoGoal.com also relates this definitive proof of the abysmal witlessness currently forming
a noxious vapour in the Commissioner's office: Gary Bettman, guesting on Manhattan sports
radio giant WFAN several weeks back, was asked about the forever infamous No Goal. His
response: "You know, other sports have had bad calls that turn out to be wrong in the playoffs
and they just went away. People forget about it. I don't understand why we get special
treatment." Hmm... Because this was the first time, after more than six months, you dropped
your guard and forgot to deny it was a bad call? Because those other sports have quickly
admitted their mistakes and apologized? Because this bad call actually determined the
awarding of the most revered sporting trophy on earth? And because you're too dim and
petty to grasp any of that? Just trying to help clear up your confusion. -- KER / JZK
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Stand-Up Guy Award
Last month, the NHL announced it will present a new award recognizing the goalie with
the league's best save percentage at the end of the regular season. The MBNA Roger Crozier
Saving Grace Award is sponsored by MBNA America Bank, for which Crozier worked after
his retirement from hockey. For you youngsters and newcomers, Crozier, winner of the Calder
and Conn Smythe Trophies during a 14-year NHL career that saw him sparkle between the pipes
for Detroit, Buffalo, and, as a footnote, Washington, was one of the finest and most acrobatic
netminders ever to grace an NHL rink, and one of the finest gentlemen and most articulate players
we've ever been privileged to interview. Crozier passed away in January 1996.
Not to steal any thunder from that nifty bit of silverware and the $25,000 that
accompanies it -- to be donated to a youth hockey or educational program of the
winning player's choice -- but we're announcing our own new NHL award. It's
so new we haven't even officially named it yet, and, um, well, there's actually
no trophy per se, and, er, ah, no cash award of any size or description either.
But it'll be quite an honour, believe us! For now we're referring to it as the
Dudley Do-right Golden SoapBox Stand-Up Guy of the Year Award. It will recognise
the NHL personage -- player, executive, or otherwise -- who escapes NHL brainwashing or
NHLPA lockstep and most articulately, most emphatically, and most often expresses Correct
Thought on the most important issues affecting hockey. So, for instance, our inaugural award
will not be going to Gretzky or Bettman or Matthew Barnaby. Were this a retroactive award,
Mario Lemieux, Brett Hull, or Ken Dryden would be among the candidates. But they've all
been pretty tight-lipped this season. So we'll tell you that right now, the leading candidates are
Steve Yzerman and Ray Whitney, for their intelligent ridicule of 4-on-4 overtime, and, urp! --
Mike Modano? Yep, Modano, for his lectures on the evils of foul play. But anybody else
could jump in at anytime. In fact, if we've overlooked some brilliant opinions from someone
you think is deserving of the honour, go ahead and nominate them by leaving a message in our
Fan Forum and telling us what they said that makes them worthy. We'll announce the winner
just before the NHL awards banquet. -- KER / JZK
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Site news
Pardon us for tooting our own kazoos again, but if we don't, who will? The end of March
saw The Death of Hockey complete a full year on-line, a fair accomplishment in its own right
in light of the mayfly lifespan of so many hockey websites. Just before that anniversary arrived,
we received our 10,000th visitor -- or at least our 10,000th visit, as it's been suggested we've
really just had the same ten people visit a thousand times each. No matter! At contract time,
they don't ask "how," just "how many." We're proud of the traffic however it arrived, and grateful
for your interest. And March also saw The Death of Hockey honoured with its 60th internet
award, high praise indeed for this modest example of cyber folk-art. We're flattered and again
grateful; kudos to our informal team of web builders and technical advisors.
On that note, we promise wholesale technical upgrades to The Death of Hockey during the
summer. From the start, we've deliberately tried to keep the look of this site simple, in order to
make the content accessible and attractive to users with even the most primitive browsers and
smallest VDTs. But we've recently had to upgrade our browsers in order to handle the growing
number of other sites overeagerly built, more for show than content, with ASP and too many
glitzy bells and whistles -- and it turns out our own site, coded perfectly on last-generation
browsers, looks like crap on next-generation browsers. Ouch! Well, just squint your eyes
when you visit for the next few weeks. Or listen to this on radio. -- SIR
Picture credits: McSorley-Brashear, CP; In the Bleachers by Moore, Universal Press Syndicate;
"Dudley Do-Right," Jay Ward Productions
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Archive
Current news This just in...
Jan-Feb'ry '00 Canadian Government Bail-Out / NAFTA /
Toronto Star: Damien Cox
December '99 Youth Hockey Injuries / Saving Maple Leaf Gardens / On the Air /
Holiday Thoughts
November '99 4 on 4: Save us, Stevie / '99 Stanley Cup: Game 7 / Modano: redeemed? /
AOL poll / Holiday shopping ideas / Site news
October '99 NHLFA Membership Push / NoGoal.com / Buffalo Snooze /
Phoenix Freebie / Death of Hockey Audio
September '99 NHL Thugs Gang Up on Hockey Fan Page
December '98 The Village Voice: "The Death of Hockey"
February '98 The New York Times: "Hockey's Proposed Cures Could Kill the Patient"
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by JEFF Z. KLEIN and KARL-ERIC REIF
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