Should We Stick It to McSorley?

I was shocked at the venom in Helene Elliott’s Oct. 7 column regarding Marty McSorley’s trial in Vancouver. I felt reminding readers of McSorley’s illegal stick penalty in the 1993 Stanley Cup finals and comparing it to his slash to Donald Brashear’s head was in poor taste and capricious. Marty has endured much this past several months, and much of it deservedly so, but kicking him while he is down is mean-spirited.

RANDY ASZMAN, La Habra

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Marty McSorley’s recent thuggery was definitely a penalty worth a suspension that will likely keep him out of hockey the rest of his life. It was also a bad judgment call on the part of someone who has made his professional career taking on other teams’ cement heads. What it is not is a crime. He was filling a role that he was hired to do against someone else with the same role.

RANDY SKIDMORE, Palmdale

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Athletes say the darndest things! Marty McSorley, serial thug, cheap-shot artist, and convicted criminal, the same guy who would have, but for the grace of God, turned Donald Brashear into another Darryl Stingley, is portraying himself as a man of honor and a martyr for the NHL [Oct. 10].

He refused to drag the NHL through the mud. He refused to show “hours of videos which would have showed ugly incidents of what really happens in the NHL.” He refused to force coaches, general managers, and Hall of Famers to testify. Marty McSorley fell on his sword for the greater good of the NHL. What a guy!

You can bet the farm that if McSorley thought for a minute that he’d do any jail time he’d have dragged Mother Teresa through the mud to save his hide.

STEVE SWITZER, Redondo Beach