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How Hockey Profits from Fighting

And how to prevent the next broken neck: It might just take one simple rule.

Charles Campbell 12 Mar 2004TheTyee.ca

Charles Campbell has worked as a writer and editor with the Georgia Straight, the Vancouver Sun and The Tyee, and teaches at Capilano University.

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I'm sick of reading about Todd Bertuzzi's suspension for his glove to the head of Colorado Avalanche player Steve Moore. But not because of Bertuzzi. I'm sick because the debate is tiresome and misguided. And the penalty -- an indefinite suspension for Bertuzzi -- assigns most of the blame in entirely the wrong place.

Sure, the big lug behaved abominably. But where is NHL commissioner Gary Bettman's apology?

The NHL rules run something like this. Punch your opponent, and draw blood if you can, but don't inflict a concussion, because that will draw undue attention to the violence we sanction. Crosscheck a player face-first into the boards, but don't break their neck, because then we might have to take action against you. Threaten your opponents, but don't act precipitously on your threats, because then the police might become involved.

These are the NHL's unofficial rules. We can talk about the culture of the game, the appetites of the fans, and hockey's long history as a violent sport. But let's assign the blame where it belongs.

Violence packaged to sell

The NHL wants violence because it sells. As former Habs great Ken Dryden pointed out in his landmark book The Game, the league expanded aggressively into the U.S. in the 1970s and '80s. In markets where hockey was often the number four sport, after football, baseball and basketball, the NHL had to offer a difference. And that difference was violence.

The league, despite its current protestations of poverty, made a lot of money on that strategy. But the NHL brass will never admit it. That's why they had to come down so hard on Todd Bertuzzi, who did something that is commonplace in hockey. A glove to the head, a shove from behind, and a big man falls on top of another one. Nothing unusual, except for the premeditation that was a little more conspicuous than is normally the case. And the accidentally broken neck.

So let's talk about the league's ongoing premeditation. That offence is hard to prove, because it doesn't take place on national television. It takes place behind closed doors, when GMs debate rules that allow fighting to remain an essential part of the game.

But the result isn't hard to define.

Let's talk about Brad May. May threatened Moore last month. "There's definitely a bounty on his head," he said, after Moore left his feet to hit Marcus Naslund, putting the Canucks' star player out for several games with a concussion. (No penalty against Moore for that hit, of course.)

Just six minutes and 33 seconds into the infamous March 8 game against Colorado, May got into a fight. At 18:03, he got into another fight. At 8:16 of the second, he was given a 10-minute misconduct penalty for verbal abuse. At 2:20 of the 3rd, he got a roughing penalty. At 8:41 another fighting major and two more 10-minute misconducts, during the brawl in which Bertuzzi became infamous for his first real offence of the game.

If the league had a policy of throwing players out for the balance of the game when they fight, would May have been able to play a central role in the escalating violence of that contest?

And what punishment has been brought down on May since that day? Sure, the team has been fined $250,000 US for failing to control its players. But really, the league still effectively sanctions what Brad May did. Its rules allowed it to happen.

A simple rule: fight and you're out

And they're not just professional hockey's rules. They are too often society's rules. Drive like a maniac, like they do in the car ads, but don't hit anybody. Zoom zoom. Remember, you're really not accountable for your reckless actions -- in fact, we think they're cool -- until someone actually gets hurt.

We see the same tendencies in policing and in politics. The violence too often meted out by the police is occasionally punished, but the police chiefs that create the culture that permits it absolve themselves of responsibility as they suspend their officers. Politicians do the same when corruption emerges on their watch. "It wasn't an elected official who did this," they say.

But right now, for sheer hypocrisy on this count, the National Hockey League owns the crown. And the greatest responsibility resides right at the top. In announcing the suspension, the commissioner's right-hand man, NHL chief disciplinarian Colin Campbell, said he doesn't think fighting is a problem -- but that the 8-2 score at the time of the incident was.

So forget all the talk about the fans' bloodlust, or the referees losing control of the game, or the coaches losing control of their teams, or why Colorado bench boss Tony Granato allowed a marked man out on the ice late in a violent contest. Let's talk about the league's denial, which is the root of the difficulty.

In the very first fight of that infamous game, the Canucks' Matt Cooke took on Steve Moore, who now lies on his back in a Vancouver hospital bed. What would have happened if they had both been sent directly to the dressing room?

If Gary Bettman cannot bring himself to declare that players who fight can't play again that night, then -- figuratively speaking, of course -- I want his head.


Charles Campbell is a contributing editor to The Tyee.  [Tyee]

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