MURDER INC.

The Federal government has weighed in on the rise of violence in our national sport. Columnists everywhere seem to be roused from their deep slumber over Don Cherry’s
”Canadian game” played by good old boys from little hamlets across the country – and all that other hype and mythology. Hockey is hockey. And the N.H.L is an organized business that sells hockey. It’s as simple as that.

But amidst all the weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth is finally perhaps, some recognition that the game has gotten out of hand. (I hate the word “gotten.”)

Zdeno Chara.is a huge defenseman. He is a lot more than an oversized goon. He is a good hockey player. But he as been hired for his size and his daunting presence – first by Ottawa and now by Boston. We have to be naive not to believe that someone must be telling him to go out there and get aggressive. His skills as a hockey player should allow him to make his presence felt without resorting to maiming his opponents. It was only a few weeks ago when he took Toronto’s Mikhail Grabovski into the boards, not once but twice. Grabovski staggered to his feet, fell once, then his head still reeling, stumbled off the ice. Chara slammed him into the boards far more viciously than would be required simply to take him out of the play.

Now the arguments are flying as fans, writers, and hockey executives look at the result of another Chara bomb, this time on Montreal Canadiens’ Max Pacioretty. The question seems to be: did he deliberately try to injure? When you are Chara’s size you don’t have to be deliberate, you just have to be there. It was unfortunate some might say, that his heavy boarding body check was made worse by coincidence not by intent. The Montreal player was skating along the boards by the player’s bench. He was hit just at the point where the bench ends and a stanchion supporting the glass is set. He went into that stanchion head first. He collapsed in a heap, out of hockey for the season, perhaps for life.

Hockey is a slam-bang game. But so is basketball. If the body contact that is permitted in hockey were to happen in basketball, the offending player would be heavily penalized and perhaps suspended. But basketball is a game of balletic skills. Hockey should be, but it is not. The league debates “head shots” but only after the best player in hockey, Sidney Crosby, was put out of action for the season with a concussion.

No one wants to tamper with the game and its speed or its body contact. But the most recent acts of hooliganism (sanctioned by the league) demonstrate finally, that the sport has become explicitly too violent. The hits are too aggressive. The contact is designed to injure.

It must stop. Hockey may be the last major spectator sport to become civilized, but the time has come. I know, Don Cherry would probably call me a bleeding heart left winger who wants to destroy the essential character of the game. But I even have to give Cherry his due. For years he has campaigned fruitlessly to have the league call ”icing” the instant the puck crosses the red line instead of waiting until a player has touched it. The player who is first on the puck is rewarded with a crushing and totally unnecessary blow into the boards.

I’m a fan. I go back to Syl Apps and Gordie Drillon. I’ve seen fights. But there has never been such a dramatic increase in the level of speed and physical condition. I remember Howie Meeker preaching to “finish your check.” What he meant was that while of course you had to bring the body in when checking someone who has the puck, but what Meeker was talking about was that second or two after a player has released the puck, you have to crash into him, to take him out of the play. There was even more of that before the league put in rules about interference. You couldn’t apply the body to someone who did not have the puck, nor could you wait and crash the original puck carrier. Most of the violence I have seen has been the attack that follows a player releasing the puck. The Chara bodycheck looks to me as if he was simply trying to take the Montreal player out of the game. He sure did.

Someone is going to be killed. The game deserves better.