Wendel Clark, Gilmour’s linemate, Leafs captain and one of the toughest players in the NHL at the time, doesn’t hesitate after seeing the collision. Instinctively, he jumps to Gilmour’s aid by dropping his gloves, instead warming his fists with McSorley’s face. The fight creates a deafening roar of approval from the 15,746 fans at the sold out Maple Leaf Gardens.
It was a moment that Sean McIndoe, a hockey blogger for The New York Times, said “managed to perfectly capture everything that Wendel Clark meant to a team, a city, and generation of fans” because he “looked across the ice at a fallen teammate and did exactly what a captain should do.”
When Clark was interviewed after the game, he responded as if it were business as usual.
“He (McSorley) got a five-minute elbowing penalty and it was our best player,” he said. “We don’t need to have that late in the game. It was just something that we had to do, stick up for our guy.”
Clark, who had grown up watching the NHL during its most physical, bloody years, was no stranger to the unwritten code of the game: it’s a dirty sport, but there is still honour. If you try to hurt our best player, you better keep your head up because someone is coming for you.
However, little did Clark know that he was soon to become nothing but a relic of the hockey world that he was once a part of.
Fast-forward to 2010 and a game between the Anaheim Ducks and the Chicago Blackhawks. Hawks defenseman Brent Seabrook just caught star Ducks forward Corey Perry with a forearm to the head. Seconds later Ducks defender James Wisniewski, seeing the hit transpire, skates with the force of a freight train towards Seabrook and crunches him along the boards with a solid body check.
Wisniewski, like Clark, was following the unwritten code of the game by defending his fallen teammate. Where the situation differs, however, is that while both McSorley and Clark avoided punishment for their actions in 1993, Wisniewski was slammed with an eight-game suspension for his hit and completely lambasted by the sports media.
The times, they are a-changin’.
The NHL has been boiling in a media stew recently, as the topic of hockey violence – specifically, headshots – has gained notoriety.
Six separate suspensions were handed out since the start of March, with other incidents, such as the Matt Cooke hit that concussed Marc Savard, gaining much discussion but no reprimand.
The issue gained so much attention that the NHL passed a new rule on March 25, giving league disciplinarian Colin Campbell power to hand out suspensions for blindside hits to the head.
The decision was passed with much support from the sports media, except for some, like James Mirtle of the Globe and Mail, who think the league hasn’t gone far enough yet.
“If the NHL truly wants to eliminate these plays, the hammer has to come down harder and with more consistency,” he said.
While the rule itself is by no means a bad thing, the sports media’s portrayal of the situation has been nothing but an embarrassment.
Mirtle, along with other prominent hockey writers (and, of course, other sports writers who usually turn a blind eye to the sport of hockey unless a violent scandal is abound), have been very vocal with their “Oh, the horror!” media act, wondering why the sport of hockey has become so violent lately.
Clearly, the NHL is trying to send a message, but nobody seems to understand why the players aren’t listening and keep doing suspension-worthy actions.
Maybe it’s time for everyone involved to take a closer look.
It’s obvious that those shaking their finger at hockey violence haven’t been familiar with the sport for very long, as the sport has been violent since its inception. Punches, elbows, slashes, hooks and other stick infractions have all been a part of the game for more than a century, so why all the surprise and lament at them happening now?
Coincidentally enough, the game has been getting a lot less violent over the last couple decades, which can be seen from fewer and fewer penalties being called each year. The NHL averaged a total of 1,137 penalty minutes per team in 1999-2000, whereas the average, at the time of this writing, is only 985 per team. Although each team has a handful of games remaining, this season’s totals won’t come close to those from 10 years ago.
The penalty minute average from the 1989-1990 season, exactly 20 years ago, was a staggering 2016 per team.
Amidst all the media fervour over violence and headshots recently, what has gone under the radar is the fact that the number of concussions in hockey has actually been going down for years. According to a study published by the Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences in 2008, there has been a downward trend in the number of hockey-related concussions since 1997.
As can be plainly seen, the sport is a lot tamer than it was, thanks to past actions by the league to reduce violence. But how much more can the sport bend under the weight of added rules?
When the NHL came back from the 2004-05 lockout, it boasted new rules that made the sport of hockey faster and more wide-open than ever before. Likewise, as the league has gained new levels of profit and worldwide media attention the competition to make it to the pros has never been higher. Combine that drive with scientific advances lending to athletic development and you have NHLers that are bigger, stronger and faster than ever before.
This means that, not only are players nowadays better hitters, they also have a lot more freedom to hit at high speeds, creating a more dangerous sheet of ice than ever before.
The NHL has made it no secret over the past decade that it is trying to expand its fan base to possible new markets across all reaches of North America, and has been battling hockey’s violent reputation every step along the way. Instead of allowing violence to continue to give the league a proverbial black eye, the NHL has been trying to change the sport to make it appear more family-friendly, in order to attract new viewers.
But what does this new generation of players think about how the sport is today compared to how it was in the past?
Like Clark before them, Wisniewski and his fellow NHLers were raised on the sport’s unwritten code. They’re aware that as long as hitting is part of the game of hockey, so too will be dirty hits. Nobody that makes it to as high of a level as the NHL could possibly be unaware of hockey’s violent tendencies.
Likewise, they know that nobody is forcing them to play. They play knowing full well that they’re going to be elbowed, hacked and punched each season; those that don’t want to endure such hardships choose to sign in leagues elsewhere.
During the hurricane of negative press in the past month few players have actually come out and voiced their opinions on the issue. If players were in favour of toning down the sport, wouldn’t more of them be vocal about it? As for those opposed, well, can you blame them for piping down? It wouldn’t look good on any player to actually come out and defend the violence in the sport.
Players’ actions, however, speak louder than words. Despite how the league is trying to change the game, players are still playing it like they always have, like when they were growing up and watching how their idols played in the good ol’ days.
The recent suspensions, despite all the unavoidable media controversy, only go to show that many players want to keep the sport the same and not get hounded for it. Yet still, the NHL remains stubbornly steadfast in their crackdown mentality, regardless of what most players likely want.
Scott Arniel, a former player and now coach of the AHL’s Manitoba Moose, was brave enough to voice his opinion and defend Wisniewski in his actions, saying that the Duck defenseman acted “the way things used to be done. Eye for an eye, and you got after people right away.”
He also said that “players are trying to get their last shots in before the rules change.”
Maybe it’s time for the league and media to stop trying to get the players to listen to them. Maybe it’s time for the league and the media to stop and listen to what the players have to say.
The players, via the NHLPA, advocated for a head shot rule before the GMs finally acted and put something on the books.
ReplyDeleteThis is what the players want.
And concussions may be down slightly, but we're still looking at a league where 7 to 8 per cent of the players are concussed every season.
Each team, consisting of roughly 20 players, has one player with a voice in the NHLPA.
ReplyDeleteWhile I fully support the importance of the NHLPA, to say that all players' opinions are accounted for is a stretch.
As said in my post, can you imagine a player coming out into the media and condoning hockey violence? He'd be lambasted in the media...it'd be a character suicide.
As for concussions, there's no way that the NHL will ever be able to fully eliminate them. With the physicality of hockey it's simply impossible. If they keep making changes to reduce the numbers further, who knows how much the game will change, possibly (certainly, in my humble opinion) for the worse.