Within the past few days, I heard an NHL player, still in his 20’s, discussing the issue of “head shots” in the NHL.
It’s a serious issue, to be sure. The league has unfortunately been slow to deal with the question of concussions as a serious health concern. All major professional leagues are really just beginning to deal with the significant medical questions involved with any degree of resolve.
Interestingly, during the interview, the player suggested that there was less “respect” (there’s that word again) in the game than there was even five years ago.
The reality is, “respect”—or lack thereof—has been an issue for much longer than that. Some players may believe it has just cropped up as a problem, but that’s simply not the case. Every generation of player looks back and seems to say that there was more respect in the game in “their” day.
The thing is, those of us who have followed the game for fifty-plus years have heard that kind of comment for years and years.
Surely, there was no “respect” in the game more than five years ago when Todd Bertuzzi did what he did to end the career of a fellow NHL player. The young player had delivered in an earlier game between the two teams what may or may not have been considered, by some, a “clean” heat on the Canucks’ leader, Markus Naslund.
The price he paid: His career.
Yet Bertuzzi is still playing and has made millions and millions of dollar in income since.
So, how serious is the league about changing this ugly aspect of the culture of the game? The problem has exited forever.
How much respect was there when Eddie Shore ended Ace Bailey’s career in the 1930’s?
How much respect was there was Montreal’s Doug Harvey intentionally speared New York’s Red Sullivan in the 1959-60 season, I think it was, and Sullivan almost died?
Was there respect between players when Wayne Maki and Ted Green swung sticks at each other in a game in the late 1960s, and Green was seriously injured and was never the same player again afterward? Or when Eddie Shack and Larry Zeidel did much the same thing with their sticks?
Similarly, when Wayne Cashman swung his stick over his own head in a wheelhouse action and just missed hitting Dennis Hextall in the head in an early 1970s NHL game, where was the respect? There was no respect- and no suspension.
Did the Broad Street Bullies, the dirtiest team in hockey history that I have ever seen, play with respect?
When Dale Hunter hammered an unsuspecting Sylvain Turgeon from behind in a playoff game in the early ‘90s—simply because Turgeon had scored a goal—was there concern for fellow players in the game? Or when Marty McSorley chased down Donald Brashear and knocked him out with a stick to the head in the year 2000?
The point is: there has always been violent, terrible behaviour in the game. For too long, the league meted out only minimum justice (the McSorley incident/suspension behind a bit of an exception perhaps, since McSorley was suspended for a year)—and is still doing so today.
Even 8 games for the recent hit Wisniewski hit is nothing, really.
Speaking of nothing, that’s what Matt Cooke got for ending Marc Savard’s season.
At some point, the NHL Players Association has to wake up and focus on protecting the majority of their membership, rather than protecting the “rights” of a relative few players who carelessly injure others, under the guise of being a tough or aggressive player. (Bob Gainey was one of the toughest players in hockey in the 1970s and ‘80s, but didn’t resort to dirty play.) In fact, the NHLPA should have been way ahead of the League ownership on this one.
It’s hard to challenge the longstanding culture of the game, but it has to be done.
