In the first period, two players tussled at the blue line, dropping their gloves to throw punches. The crowd roared its approval, many leaping to their feet and punching the air.
I stayed in my seat, as did some others. Cheer a teenager as he punches another in the face? Can’t do it. Those young men were barely older than I had been when a magazine article revealed to me the ugly side of pro hockey.
Junior hockey permits fighting because the NHL permits fighting. Hockey would become even more savage without it, goes the argument. Besides, the braying crowds demand it.
Yet, they hold an Olympic hockey tournament without fighting. World championships, too. All the major sports — football, basketball, baseball, soccer — punish fighting with automatic banishment from the game. As does college hockey. As did the NHL did before 1922.
The hockey world faces a crisis. Don Cherry used his bully pulpit onHockey Night in Canada to dismiss as “pukes” the retired NHL pugilists who now question the role of goonery in hockey. Cherry apologized, sort of, weeks later, but the damage was done. He had estranged himself from some of the very players on whose bloody faces and sore knuckles he built a private fortune.
It’s time to ban fighting in hockey. Now. Before any of these teenaged players whose exploits we cheer wind up with brains of mush, like poor Reggie Fleming.
...All the wars of all the nights of the past suddenly rage through Reggie Fleming's mind and, spinning, he attacks Harris, fists up and swinging, the crowd shrieking. Fleming misses with a wild right hook. Harris slams him in the face with a right, a left, drives a right deep in to Fleming's belly. Fleming gasps, doubles over and Harris slams his head back with an uppercut. The crowd screams with delight. The other players watch. Fleming swings blindly at Harris but Harris moves in, punches him furiously in the face and head and hurls him against the boards. Harris pulls Fleming's jersey over his head, tosses him to the ice, jumps on him and flails away. Blood appears on Fleming's jersey, spreading fast like ink on a blotter. Harris doesn't let up and Fleming is helpless. It's brutal and sickening to watch and finally it's broken up. To boos and thrown debris, Fleming leaves the ice, gasping for breath, blood pouring down his battered face. He heads to the dressing room, alone, closes the door softly behind him, and sits on the bench. From far away come the crowd noises. He says nothing, takes off his jersey, throws it in a corner. He turns back, closes his eyes for a few seconds. He opens them and looks at his hands, turning them slowly. They're trembling.
"Sometimes," he says softly and haltingly, "Sometimes I wish ... I wish I could control myself just once. It's ... it's the kids. I go home and they see the cuts and bruises and--" He doesn't finish the sentence. He lifts his hands to his face. For a long time he's quiet and then, from behind the red swollen hands, a long, shuddering sigh. In the morning, the children will see him. He knows what they will ask. And he knows, as always, he won't have an answer...
“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?”
2 comments:
I spent years in minor hockey as a parent but also as a volunteer league official in the PCAHA. In almost 20 years, I witnessed 2,000 games or so. 90% or more of the folks involved addressed their roles with great attitudes and for most kids, the experience was worthwhile.
However, a small segment of people (parents and coaches) were more interested in developing future pro hockey players than healthy young adults. I've seen people introducing 11-year-olds to on-ice fighting techniques, teaching "proper" ways to slash the feet of opponents or how to apply a butt end to someone's mid section without being caught, etc. etc.
Worse was the claim that a kid should get back out there after his "bell was rung." Administrators tried to convince coaches about appropriate responses to injury but we kept coming up against the Don Cherry effect, where coaches knew better and Canadian kids had to "learn toughness."
Many years ago, a U of WA doctor had developed important information about brain damage in youth sport, noting the risk was particularly high during the ages of rapid growth. We've had warnings from the scientists for a very long time but we consciously chose to ignore the messages.
Don Cherry has led and inspired the deniers, not by knowledge but by arrogant certainty that they know best. We've paid attention recently to high profile deaths but there have been many more lives damaged because of unnecessary ignorance in sport management.
Life is risky proposition. How, and from whom, we learn how to manage those risks is a haphazard affair. Some people can take a whole lot of concussing, others can take very little. Same goes for drugs, loud noise, and a host of other things that harm, irrepairably, many others but not everybody. I read, in a Jim Bouton book if I rememher correctly, that most aspiring pro athletes would accept shortening their lives considerably for success. High risk for the hoped for high reward.
Let them go.
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