A Whacking Shame

With one stupid, indefensible swipe of his stick Monday night, Boston Bruin defenseman Marty McSorley set hockey back decades.

NHL players, fans and executives should have spent Tuesday celebrating one of the game’s shining moments: the 20th anniversary of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team’s stunning victory over the Soviets at Lake Placid, N.Y. Instead, they had to confront an ugly relic from a brutish past the NHL has tried to leave behind.

The damage may be beyond measure.

Not the damage to Vancouver Canuck winger Donald Brashear, who was struck in the right temple by McSorley’s stick and fell backward to the ice in a horrifying heap with only seconds left in a 5-2 Vancouver victory. Brashear suffered a concussion and was carried off on a stretcher, but he was released from a Vancouver hospital Tuesday and attended the team’s practice at GM Place. He is expected to be out of the lineup three weeks.

Bad as all that may be, the lasting harm inflicted by McSorley, who made a career of being Wayne Gretzky’s bodyguard in Edmonton and Los Angeles, was to the image of the game.

That’s because McSorley’s vicious chop will be replayed endlessly on the news and sports highlight shows. It will dominate sorrowful conversations of those who love hockey and give ammunition to those who love to malign it. McSorley’s brutal act will become the dominant image of this game, and his apologies can’t change that.

Instead of remembering the spectacular goal set up by Paul Kariya and scored by Oleg Tverdovsky last week in the Mighty Ducks’ game against Calgary, instead of marveling over the acrobatics of Buffalo goaltender Dominik Hasek, instead of remembering the poignant All-Star game film of Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and Gordie Howe passing the torch of leadership to Kariya, Pavel Bure, Jaromir Jagr and Eric Lindros, fans and critics will remember McSorley skating up behind an unsuspecting Brashear and clubbing him.

McSorley was suspended indefinitely Tuesday and is scheduled to have a hearing today in New York with Colin Campbell, the league’s director of hockey operations and chief disciplinarian. That may be merely the start of his woes.

Vancouver police have assigned two investigators to conduct an investigation and the results will be presented to the crown attorney’s office, which will decide whether to press charges.

If McSorley is charged with aggravated assault, he could face up to 14 years in jail. If he is charged with assault causing bodily harm, or assault with a weapon, the maximum sentence is 10 years.

Courts, however, have been reluctant to punish offenses committed in NHL games. Wayne Maki of St. Louis and Ted Green of Boston were acquitted of assault charges following a stick-swinging duel in a 1969 exhibition game, Dan Maloney of Detroit was acquitted of assaulting Toronto defenseman Brian Glennie in 1975, and Tiger Williams was acquitted of assault in 1977 for hitting Pittsburgh’s Dennis Owchar.

In 1988, Dino Ciccarelli of Minnesota was sentenced to a day in jail and fined $1,000 for hitting Luke Richardson in the head repeatedly with his stick. A 1975 trial in which Boston’s Dave Forbes was charged with aggravated assault against Minnesota’s Henry Boucha ended in a hung jury, and the prosecutor declined to ask for a second trial.

For in-house precedents, Campbell has the 21-game suspension imposed in 1993 on Washington’s Dale Hunter for a blindside hit of New York Islander center Pierre Turgeon while Turgeon celebrated a playoff goal. If Campbell wants to send an unequivocal message, he must suspend McSorley 30 or 40 games, even though McSorley, nearly 37 and approaching unrestricted free agency, may never serve the entire sentence.

“If McSorley plays another game in this league, then this league is a . . . joke,” Canuck defenseman Mattias Ohlund said Monday. “It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen. That guy should be treated the same as if he had tried to kill a guy on the street, because that’s what he could have done had his stick hit [Brashear] across the neck.”

Brashear had beaten McSorley in a fight early in the game and skated away from a second challenge from McSorley. Brashear also had collided with Boston goalie Byron Dafoe, apparently by accident, but Dafoe injured his knee and left the arena on crutches.

Hockey’s code of honor calls for retaliation in such circumstances: You hurt my teammate, I’ll hurt one of yours. If it was accidental, I’ll still hurt one of yours.

But even Dafoe could not condone how badly McSorley twisted that code. “That’s not hockey,” Dafoe said. “That’s just not acceptable.”

It’s sickening--Vancouver Coach Marc Crawford’s word--in every sense. It was sickening to glimpse the potential for violence in those trained and encouraged to be physical within the lines of a hockey rink.

There can be no doubt McSorley meant to injure Brashear, because McSorley was too close and his stick was angled too decisively upward to have been intended as a jab on the shoulder or back. A right-handed shooter, McSorley was on his forehand when he struck Brashear with potentially deadly force.

Highlight films won’t say so, but hockey has taken aggressive measures to banish goonery and erase the perception that it is played by lawless backwoodsmen. It instituted 10-game suspensions for players who leave the bench to join a fight and $10,000 fines to their teams and coaches, and in recent years, there have been more bench-clearing brawls in baseball than hockey. Fighting overall has decreased, and with rosters reduced to 23, few teams can afford to carry players who can fight but can’t skate.

McSorley, whose 3,381 penalty minutes are the third most in NHL history, always has been easy to like and to hate. He skated the thin line between physicality and goonery, yet he’s bright and articulate and was an able spokesman for the NHL Players Assn. during the 1994-95 lockout.

King fans may never forgive him for using the illegal stick that changed the course of the 1993 Stanley Cup finals--the penalty he drew for his excessively curved stick gave the Montreal Canadiens a power play that enabled them to tie Game 2, tie the series and win the Cup--but many lionized him for his bashing hits on opponents who dared touch Gretzky or any other King.

McSorley acknowledged trying to goad Brashear into another fight but denied intent to injure.

“I apologize to Donald Brashear and all the fans who had to watch that,” he said. “I embarrassed my hockey team. . . . I’m still in shock at what I did. I have to come to terms with what I did. There’s no excuse. It was so stupid, I can’t believe I did it.”

Believe it. And believe he has done grievous harm to a game that has been nothing but good to him.

RANDY HARVEY: Attack brings back memories of Juan Marichal. Page 2

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Suspensions

Longest suspensions in NHL history by games:

* 21--Dale Hunter, Washington, cross-checking Pierre Turgeon, April 1993.

* 20--Tom Lysiak, Chicago, physical abuse of linesman, October 1983.

* 15--Wilf Paiement, Colorado, stick-swinging with Dennis Polonich, October 1978.

* 15--Dave Brown, Philadelphia, cross-checking Tomas Sandstrom, October 1987.

* 15--Tony Granato, Kings, slashing Neil Wilkinson, February 1994.

* 13--Ted Green, Boston, hit Wayne Maki in head with his stick, September 1969.

* 12--David Shaw, New York Rangers, high-sticking Mario Lemieux, October 1989.

* 12--Ron Hextall, Philadelphia, jumping Chris Chelios, May 1989.

* 12--Matt Johnson, Kings, deliberately injuring Jeff Beukeboom, November 1998.

CHRONOLOGY:

TWO MINUTES INTO GAME: McSorley and Brashear fight, with the Vancouver forward getting the best of the brawl, above left.

7:38 REMAINING IN FIRST PERIOD: McSorley challenges Brashear again, but Brashear skates away, leaving McSorley with a double-minor and a misconduct.

1 MINUTE LEFT IN GAME: McSorley reenters with outcome decided.

2.7 SECOND REMAINING: McSorley’s two-handed slash to the right temple, above right, with stick fully extended, send Brashear reeling backward. His head struck the ice and blood flowed from his nose. Mark Messier and team trainer aid Brashear, below.

2.7 SECOND REMAINING: McSorley’s two-handed slash to the right temple, above right, with stick fully extended, send Brashear reeling backward. His head struck the ice and blood flowed from his nose. Mark Messier and team trainer aid Brashear, below.