The Gladiator Effect.... Does The Instigator Rule Make It Worse?

RootCausesMatter

EvenInTheMakeBelieveWorldOfProHockeyVille

“I don’t think there’s a 10-year old who grows up dreaming of beating the crap out of guys for a living. These guys were all stars at one point, but once you’re being paid, you have to do what you are told. You can become something you aren’t. What’s going on when guys know they have to go out and fight? I don’t know the effect that has.

“My older brother (Geoff) quit in major junior as a 20-year-old in Seattle because he couldn’t stand being told to go beat the (crap) out of somebody because they did something wrong to a teammate.

“I had 20 fights in my career, and I remember being scared every time. Could you imagine having to do that and that wasn’t your personality — the toll?”

Russ Courtnall, Former NHL Player

Speaking Last Week After The Death Of Wade Belak

Here's the thing.

If you think about Pro Hockey before the third-man-in rule (1971), and, especially, before the instigator rule (1992), tough guys often did more back then than just fight.

And, most importantly, they didn't always fight the other team's designated enforcer in a staged, center ice act of choreography with flying fists.

Think, say, of John Ferguson before '71.

Or, geez, how about a guy like Larry Robinson before '92.

Heckfire, even Semenko could skate a little. And, more importantly, he could often be an intimidating enforcer by dealing with the weasels on the other team directly because they couldn't hide behind the instigator rule. I mean, just imagine how long Matt Cooke would have lasted if he had started his career in the late '80's instead of the late '90's?

So....

If you're a kid who gets to the NHL (or even the WHL) as a tough guy now....?

Well, you have to be a pure gladiator who only gets 3-4 shifts per game. And while you're out there for that extremely limited time, more often than not you are out there to either fight, or, at the very least, stare down the other team's designated gladiator who is doing exactly the same thing as you.

I mean, the fear of getting hurt doing this is one thing.

And it is a very real fear, as noted by Rusty Courtnall above.

But the fear of never being able to lose, because if you do you will likely soon be gone for good, is another thing entirely.

I can't even imagine that kind of pressure and what it would do to somebody's well-being if they had to try and deal with it day-after-day, week-after-week, month-after-month, and season-after-season for 10, or even 15, years.

Marty McSorley did it for that long.

Longer, actually.

And he did it both before and after the instigator rule came into being.

****

A couple of years ago Mr. McSorley talked about how the instigator rule changed things during a long interview he gave to the CBC's Fifth Estate in the wake of the fighting-related death of senior amateur hockey player Don Sanderson.

During the interview McSorley makes it very clear, purely from a nuts-and-bolts point of view, that the instigator rule did make it impossible for him to do his job by dealing with transgressors directly. He also acknowledges that this led to more gladiator-style fighting.

However, McSorely also says that, while the inability to deal with the game's weasels was frustrating, the gladiator stuff never really bothered him.

He says that.

But...

Watch his face as he says it.

Again.

The pressure on these guys, especially the relentless nature of it, is unimaginable to me.

_____

On the night that the image at the top of the post was taken, back in 1994, McSorley was more than just the Great One's post-Semenkoian Bodyguard....Why?....Because that night he, McSorely, got the assist on Gretzky's 802nd NHL goal which was one more than Gordie Howe, an awesome pre-third-man enforcer himself.....Ironically, the goal was scored against Geoff Courtnall's Vancouver Canucks....Rusty joined the Canucks to play with his brother a year later after he bounced around the league for awhile when he was first drummed out of Toronto for not being tough enough.....The Leafs acquired enforcer John Kordic when they dealt the younger Courtnall brother to the Canadiens in 1988....Mr. Kordic is, unfortunately, no longer with us...He died tragically in 1992, the year the instigator rule was born.

.