Ask my wife how many times I’ve said “it’s only a matter of time” before somebody dies because of what CBC’s Don Cherry and other hockey figureheads don’t just allow, but actively promote as “part of the game” of hockey.
What will be done about it? Left unchecked, likely not much or not nearly enough. In fact, doing nothing about it is already in full swing.
Before I go further, condolences to the family and friends of Don Sanderson who died yesterday because his head violently smashed against the ice in a fight three weeks ago in a game of hockey.
Out of respect I hesitated to even write this blog, but the rationalizations, the excuses, and the “yeah buts” have already started.
Meanwhile a 21 year old kid is no longer with us and let me be crystal clear, it’s not because “his helmet accidentally fell off near the end of a fight.”
What, precisely, would sports-casters have us believe? Based on the not-so-carefully chosen words used to comment and report on this incident (“helmet accidentally fell off and near the end of a fight”) we are expected to believe that had the helmet stayed on or had the tragedy occurred near the beginning of a fight, then maybe we’d have something worthwhile to investigate.
But the idiocy doesn’t stop there.
I watched TSN’s coverage yesterday only to observe most of the commentary was about loose chin straps, visors, and whether it’s unruly versus sportsmanlike for a player to remove his helmet before duking-it-out per the unwritten code-of-conduct for avoiding bruised knuckles.
In other words so long as we have a fire-plan – and an empty commitment to introduce a few meaningless tweaks without, of course, “over-reacting” – then arson is okay.
A little history here. I am 51 years old and grew up in the West Island of Montréal on a steady diet of Dickie Moore, Jean Béliveau, Rocket and Pocket, Guy Lafleur…etc., and as a kid I used to deliver the Montréal Gazette to enforcer John Ferguson Sr. on Butternut Crescent. In 1972 and as he was coming off the ice from a morning skate at Maple Leaf Gardens in the Canada-Russia series, Serge Savard gave me his autograph because when I yelled out his name I called him Serge, not Surge.
Years later Mr. Savard gave me four tickets to a Canada Juniors game he was scouting at Copps Coliseum. I sat to his right, and to his left was, ironically, Don Cherry. I reminded Mr. Savard of the 1972 autograph he gave me when I was 14. He was at least kind enough to say and pretend he remembered.
Today, I don’t miss a game or a practice of the Oakville Minor-Midget team my 15 year old son, Austin plays for, and I’ve been coaching the same 3-ON-3 team for four years. And yes, sadly, living in Ontario since 1985, I cheer for the Leafs.
When I was a kid and played – very badly I might ad – chasing a player with your outreached stick was hooking, not “poke-checking”; checking a player who very clearly no longer had the puck wasn’t “finishing ones check,” it was interference, as was the lunacy that goes on now in front of the net.
All this to say, I have a clue about hockey and frankly, I am sick-and-tired of the Don Cherry’s of the world telling people like me I don’t understand the game, even reducing to ridicule those who dare to see and voice a different opinion.
We are “wimps,” we don’t know what “truly sells hockey fans,” and “we’ve never laced up a pair of skates” so we don’t know what it’s like to be “in the heat of the battle” or the meaning of “being provoked.” That’s how Bryan Lewis, former Director for Officiating for the NHL, made me feel when we chatted once at a dinner following a golf tournament at then named Georgetown Golf Club. ‘I’d only ever played or been involved in house league, so I had no right to comment’ was the essence of our, believe me, very short and curt conversation.
I don’t like to use profanity on this space, but that attitude is pure and utter Bull. And those of us who sit idly by, and I include myself on that list, are just as guilty as those who promote the idiotic notion that fighting in hockey is “part of the game.”
NFL Football is a far more physical game than Hockey. When is the last time you saw two football players fight? Fighting is “part of the game” of hockey only because we let it. If we didn’t Don Sanderson would still be alive.
Shortly after my run-in with Bryan Lewis, I stopped watching NHL hockey in disgust. It wasn’t hockey anymore. It was a bunch of clutch-and-grab thugs. The old days of 15 players and one enforcer was reversed in a season which amounted to little more than an audition for Don Cherry’s Rock’em Sock’em Nth edition.
Since the 2004-05 lockout and the return of the new NHL, I am happy with some of the changes brought to the game, although in my opinion there is still room and urgent need for further improvement that wouldn’t ruin the physical aspect of the game.
For starters, the NHL and the CBC has to disassociate itself from Don Cherry and the Don Cherry attitude. Fighting in hockey along with some of the other shenanigans is nothing to be glamorized or encouraged, much less should players who make the effort to avoid fighting serve as wimps on the highlight reel for Coach’s Corner. Ron MacLean has nothing to be proud of either for the incarnation he has allowed himself to adopt over the years because of his association with Cherry.
Mark my words, tonight on Coach’s Corner Ron MacLean will, in his usual bait-cue format, urge Don Cherry to comment on the death of Don Sanderson. After a few “beautiful boy” teary words, Cherry will offer the excuses consistent with the theme outlined above. Don Cherry will direct blame everywhere but at himself, and, as I believe he is paid to do, he will continue to incite and encourage in the youngest of players in Canada’s national sport the sort of disgusting on-ice behaviour to which fans have become desensitized and cheer week-in week-out.
The NHL, it will be said, is accountable to a different set of laws and rules, or as at least one sports-caster, Bob McKenzie, had the guts to admit, this matter won’t get nearly the attention it deserves because Don Sanderson didn’t play, and die, in the NHL.
How sad a reality is that?
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Follow-up blog-post January 4, 2009 at 9:45 am: Don Cherry promotes “you’re a dead person” on same night Sanderson is honoured