Hockey Savagery: Just a Healthy Outlet?

It is encouraging to read statistics arriving from the National Hockey League denoting that more penalty time has been handed out in the first stages of the Stanley Cup playoffs this year than in 1989.

This is progress, of a kind one looks for in sports where improvement is expected today.

There was reason for alarm last year when fighting and roughhousing decreased in the playoffs, contrasted to 1988, leaving some to worry that hockey was in decline.

But the upsurge this year is rated satisfactory, bolstered by a concussion or two resulting from board-rammings and body checks.

Guys who throw knuckles are singles hitters. They contribute to the game, but candidates to drive German sedans are those who cause head and vertebrae disorders. They are your long-ball artists.

But a dissenting vote never will be cast here against savagery in hockey, any more than we will be caught putting the knock on auto racing.

Living in ignorance for years, we never gained an understanding of auto racing until a holocaust of sorts occurred at Indianapolis--two dead, others burned and maimed.

Vatican Radio issued a plea to stop the sport, not suspecting the eloquent rebuttal that would follow. Supporters of auto racing informed the Vatican that more people are killed going to church on Sunday than in racing.

It was pointed out, too, that more people die who slip in the bathtub.

Of the five billion or so who inhabit the earth, the number taking baths isn’t known. Nor do we care to research it.

But whatever the percentage, we came away looking upon auto racing with a new respect, as we do hockey, whose explanation of fights has revolutionized the medical world.

Fighting, says hockey, is no act of barbarism. It is, as one genius states, “a healthy outlet for aggressions.”

Hockey moves in a cerebral orbit all its own. A faction, for instance, is cool to fights, mainly because they delay the game. Bodies and equipment get strewn across the ice. Bridgework gets knocked out. By the time those in charge tidy up, valuable time has been lost, setting back for the principals the partaking of postgame nourishment.

It must be said, too, in behalf of hockey that those indulging may riot, but they never loot.

And you get an interesting insight into mentality at the upper echelon in the case of Harold Ballard, late owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs, who rejected women reporters in the locker room.

Told this was discriminatory, Harold relented. All he asked was that women entering the locker room remove their clothes.

One responded that she would if the male reporters would, too. When male reporters refused, it was suggested, as a tiebreaker, that Ballard remove his clothes.

In the end, no one did, and Harold went to his resting place, a normal man departing what he saw as a world deranged.

It was a previous Toronto owner, Conn Smythe, who posted this sign in his team’s dressing room: “If you can’t beat ‘em in the alley, you can’t beat ‘em on the ice.”

This tender homily, oft-quoted in hockey, is rated so brilliant that the NHL named a division after Smythe.

It isn’t known what Patrick, Norris and Adams did to promote mayhem, but divisions were named after them, too.

We talked about violence in hockey one day with a smart general manager, Glen Sather of Edmonton, who observed:

“Beating each other with fists is not sport. Nor is hitting each other with sticks. I sometimes feel that the introduction of protective gear, such as helmets, masks and pads, has encouraged violence on the ice. Before the protective gear, players had an awareness of danger. Now they shrug, figuring you can’t hurt anyone very badly.”

They give it an honest effort, though, proof of which is, the playoffs this year are young and guys already are going out with gratuitous injuries.

As they are in other sports today, athletes in hockey are bigger, stronger and better conditioned than they used to be, meaning they can deliver richer payloads when the brawling begins. They also have learned to use sticks in subtle ways, harder for officials to detect.

When polls are taken among hockey fans, folks answer, almost unfailingly, that they don’t go to see fights.

But a lingering suspicion exists that even though they don’t go to see fights, they want to be around in case one happens.

But don’t try to bait us into putting the knock on hockey fights. It is therapy, we are told, and hockey supports mental health.