Violence in Hockey

I woke up this morning and went through my regular routine of checking out the various online sports pages beginning with www.si.com, on to www.espn.com and finishing off with the redheaded step-child of sports news www.tsn.ca. Si, my personal favorite had Peter King's excellent column "Monday Morning QB" as its headline, while ESPN had NBA basketball as their front page. TSN (who without hockey would play curling, darts and poker on a pre-recorded loops) led with a very different and more troubling story. Their headline was "Discipline to Come: Cormier Ejected from QMJHL After a Head Shot on an Opponent". If you want to check out a video of Cormier's flying elbow to the head of another guy you can check it out on youtube.

Now, I do not know Patrice Cormier, I've never met him and he is probably a good guy. He grew up not too far from where I went to College in New Brunswick and probably dated a couple of the residents of 16 Allison in Sackville. His character is not the point of this post, it is in fact the role that violence plays within hockey (and box lacrosse to a certain extent).

As it stands hockey and lacrosse are the only sports I can think of where a fight, where punches that are thrown in an organized fashion is condoned. I say condoned in this instance because, while penalties are given to the combatants, gameplay is halted and the fight is allowed to continue until the linesmen deem fit and it is broken up. In any other sport I have been involved in rugby, football and basketball, a single punch, let alone a glorified bar fight warrants an automatic ejection from the competition. I am not here to question the idea of how cool fights are either, I love seeing fights in UFC or a good boxing card or even a couple drunks in a bar swing wildly. The point I hope to make is that fighting within hockey plays a role is erroding the control of the game and removes the power of game officials to maintain order within the competition. When that happens people get hurt and stupid elbows and punches are thrown and sticks are swung.

Anyone that refs hockey feel free to correct me but at the major levels of hockey if an individuals participates in a fight he is awarded a five minute major penalty for fighting. A major penalty, now tell me if an hockey player was swinging away with his stick on another play, an act which warranted a five minute major penalty there would be no way the referee would allow that to continue until that player got tired and stopped swinging. What allowing fighting/violent acts to occur but still penalizing it allows for a vigilante style of play within the game. This was brought to the surface during the infamous Todd Bertuzzi/Steve Moore affair, the idea that within the game one enforcer or even a regular player could be sent to send a message or exact some sort of vengance for an earlier play or occurance. The rules of the game, the laws of the land can be circumvented by the coaches and players which allows for a unique subplot within each played game. A subplot of revenge and violence more apt for an Scorsese movie than a sporting event. It always made me laugh that the NHL, the league that has fist fights as a major selling point has a major trophy (the Lady Byng trophy) for gentlemenly and sportsmanlike play.

Who knows if this idea of vengence within games, the idea that messages can be sent, that the rules are there but are merely a suggestion or guideline played a role in Patrice Cormier's elbow to the head of his opponent. We may never find out but in my humble opinion, hockey should either let fights be part of the game, let the Derek Boogaards and Bob Proberts do their thing where they amp up the crowd and fight their way to paycheques and have that be legal within the rule or join the rest of the 21st century sports and let teams play the game in order to stick it to their opponents.