The 5th’s piece combined with a personal weekend experience has me adding another chapter to this saga. The cure, I am convinced, is to treat the cause, not merely the symptoms.      

First, kudos to programs such as the 5th estate and last month Steve Paikin’s The Agenda – Fighting and Our Game, as well as many others such as Bob McCown for giving this topic the attention it deserves.

Two months ago I thought nothing, or very little, would come of the attention fighting in hockey has received. Today, I am slightly more hopeful. But I am concerned the attention is off target.

Eliminating fighting in hockey is easy. Introduce zero-tolerance lifetime suspensions for fighting and you won’t see another fight. And maybe that’s a good, although radical, idea.

But treating only the symptom is no cure for the cause.

Beyond watching the puck a lot else goes on in many hockey games – not the least of which is bad officiating – that leads to fighting. As much as he is part, if not the cause, of the problem, Don Cherry is correct in one aspect of the issue. Ninety percent of the urge, or rather the rage, that causes one player to go after another is due to something an offending player did. The offensiveness, or not, of a particular action leading to a fight is another issue for a different day.

The problem isn’t so much what a player does in retaliation, although retaliation is certainly a serious problem in and of itself. Rather, the root of the problem in hockey is what any given player is allowed to get away with in the first place. Where Don Cherry’s logic fails miserably is in urging players to take matters into their own hands. But that’s okay, I don’t expect much of a person with Don Cherry’s level of academic and social education.

But for those who aren’t barbarian it’s pretty simple to understand the cure is dealing with what offending players do in the first place, not just what other players do in retaliation. Worse, is to ignore both.

In my twenties I recall watching New York Islanders goaltender Billy Smith famous for every night mercilessly hacking-away with his stick at the calves of opposing players who, in Smith’s opinion, were standing too close to his goal-crease blocking his view.

With officials night-after-night and year-after-year closing their eyes to Smith’s slashing infraction I recall thinking if it was me, and knowing my own temper in such situations, I likely would have swung around with both hands on my own stick and decapitated the guy. Let that tell you something about why I never got very far playing hockey, or why Don Cherry type thinking is alive and well.

This past weekend in a game against St-Catharines, on their turf, I watched as my 15 year old son got violently rammed into the boards from behind. Was I happy that two bigger players on my sons team “took care of the problem” a la Don Cherry? On the spur of the moment and as a father caught up in the emotion in seeing his son flat on the ice, bloody chin, bruised knee, and bruised ego? Yeah, perhaps a little. But was that the right thing to do or emotion to feel?

The answers to those questions are irrelevant. The only point of importance is the official who only handed out a 2 minute cross-checking penalty instead of immediately ejecting the offending player from the game per the rules. From there the game disintegrated where, by the end of it, gloved punches were flying about.

Yesterday my son’s team played another game against Hamilton, this time on our turf in Oakville. A late game slash by one team (does it matter which team?) led to an even more vicious retaliating slash, followed by an all-out brawl in which the official who tried to break-it-up ended up flat on his back under the mêlée.

When my son’s team plays its third playoff game tonight, I am certain the team will be short one or two players due to suspensions for fighting. It’s a safe bet a couple of Hamilton players will be warming the stands too. But what of the initial slashing infractions that got the ball rolling? Any bets those are long-since forgotten?

But that’s okay, next week on Coach’s Corner the boys will hear from Don Cherry that settling-up the score for what officials don’t officiate is ‘part of the game … and that a few more Don Sanderson’s are worth it!’

Not five hours after my last post “Don Cherry, are you happy now?” during CBC’s Coach’s Corner Don Cherry explains the problem with the Leafs is their unwillingness to retaliate.

Cherry then offers “not-to-worry” comfort to CBC viewers because in two years “when the Irishman takes over” Leaf players will have been trained to murder their opponents.

Think I am kidding? Click the Don Cherry and Ron Maclean image and watch the video for yourself! 

Keep in mind, Cherry’s statements come on the same night and during the same CBC segment of Coach’s Corner in which this photo of Don Sanderson was posted in silence, complete with promises from McLean and Cherry the real issues behind the death, they would look at another time.

What exactly is Cherry suggesting? Quoting Cherry’s logic as depicted in the CBC video clip, is the player who fought with Don Sanderson also going to be a “dead person?”

I urge you to carefully watch the video-clip again at the point when Cherry ridicules Tomas Kaberle for not “…going up and doing something…”.  Take note of what Kaberle is doing; by extending his left arm Kaberle is appealing to the nearby referee. Excuse me, but isn’t that what Assistant Captains are supposed to do? Isn’t that what we teach our children, don’t retaliate, don’t take matters into your own hands, take it to the proper authority … in this case the on-ice official?

No, not Don Cherry. That’s not what he advocates and preaches on TV every week on CBC’s Coach’s Corner. According to Cherry, Tomas Kaberle should have “done something about it” and then, maybe, in the course of doing so a head hits the ice resulting in another “dead person.”

One final question, as a father and a coach of minor league hockey, are Don Cherry’s values the ones CBC wants me to teach my son and the other boys I coach?

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?

~ ~ ~

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

We tee-off an hour after we land on Barefoot/Fazio at 1:30 pm which will be the first of 8 rounds in the next 8 days. We, being me, my friend and neighbour Ross, and 7 other of Ross’ closest buddies who have been doing this trip every year at this time for the past 12+ years.

Heather is home with the kids, and working. Yes, I feel a little guilty, but I’m also a little focused.

Not sure if it was because it was my rookie year or if it will always feel this way, but the withdrawal is noticeable. I keep reliving some of the week’s special moments.

It seems 8 straight days of golf wasn’t enough, I just had to get out again yesterday. Ross was going to play with me yesterday, but the email quote went something like this “Sharon says if I would like to sleep in the garage I should go play.”

Lo and behold I shot an 82, (net 69) based on the 13 handicap I was assigned down south. Not the gross 69 I had hoped for. That will have to come next year after I get this near 50 year old shell in the shape it used to be, or at least, that it needs to be. I still firmly believe my best rounds of golf are in the years ahead, not behind.

It was a very special week of golf. One I will always remember having not just to do with the golf, but the people. A great bunch of guys. Can’t wait until next year.

Now back to work!