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It’s hard to listen to the sometimes-bigoted windbag of a Canadian hockey commentator, Don Cherry, declaim that the sport is going soft because of new rules and stricter penalties put in place by the NHL to protect players from brain damage. Cherry has been known to criticize players who play a less physical style of hockey, and constantly blames the influence of European-born players for what he considers the slow destruction of his beloved sport. There has been some resistance from the press over Cherry’s xenophobic remarks, but by day’s end, Cherry’s tended to walksaway unscathed. During the very first week of this year’s NHL season, however, Cherry struck a serious nerve with his views on three of the most talked about topics in hockey: drug abuse, brain injuries, and players pushing for violence regulation in a sport known for violence. While Cherry has courted controversy in the past, these comments follow one of the darkest off-seasons in hockey history, and it could cost the man, considered by many to be a national treasure, his job.
Hockey is a tough sport. If you needed to explain it to an alien from Mars, you could tell him that twelve guys wear metal blades strapped to their feet, skate fast on ice, fly into each other, and hit a rock hard piece of vulcanized rubber with sticks; also, there is fighting. Mostly guys clock each other in the head with fistis until one can’t take any more, or the refs are brave enough to get in the middle and break up the fight. To many novice fans, fighting is big part of the sport’s allure. If you ask somebody who casually watches a handful of professional games a year, they more or less wait to see the fights. The inevitability of seeing two men fistfight is the biggest draw to a game that constantly competes with soccer (ugh, football) for the title of “Fourth Most Popular Sport in America.” And no matter how many people want to say it isn’t part of the game, deep down they know that getting rid of the fighting would ultimately imperil a sport that already has problems filling arenas.
In the last five years, head injuries, and their related long-term impact, have become a common topic of discussion in professional sports. In American football, the suicides of players Andre Waters and Dave Duerson have both been blamed on the effects of impact to their heads during their playing days; Duerson even text messaged his ex-wife a week before shooting himself in the chest, “Please, see that my brain is given to the NFL’s brain bank.” Even though hockey is just as much of a high-impact sport, openly talking about head injuries only just became fair game during the 2010-2011 season. Star players were dropping like flies. On March 7th, Boston Bruin Marc Savard suffered a grade 2 concussion after a blindside hit by well-known antagonist Matt Cooke. Whether or not Savard will ever play hockey again is unknown (the Bruins have announced he will sit out the 2011-12 season), but the big story of the season was the pair of head hits that sidelined the game’s greatest player, Sidney Crosby. As the current season neared, there was even talk that Crosby, the marquee player for the NHL, should retire instead of risking serious cranial injury. Crosby isn’t even 25. He’s too young to give up, but too young to risk impairing his mental capacities from another elbow to his head. Crosby’s situation is a catch-22 with no great answers presenting themselves, but if you listen to commentators on message boards discussing the Pittsburgh Penguins, the general consensus is that Crosby should play. Several people “Liked” a Facebook comment supporting one tactic for protecting “Sid the Kid”: “Just get him a couple big goons to make sure nobody touches him. Id do it lol!” 
That might be a good idea in theory. But while fans and press are busy talking about the well being of all-stars like Crosby and Savard, they are failing to mention that the players whose job is to protect the superstars on the ice, are suffering far worse real-life fates than being put in a penalty box, and many critics think they know why.
The 2011-12 season was supposed to be a new era for the NHL. The last two Stanley Cups were won by original franchises (the Chicago Blackhawks and Boston Bruins, respectively), the city of Winnipeg got their beloved team back fifteen years after a failed attempt to set up shop in Atlanta, and hall-of-fame-bound player Brendan Shanahan was appointed as the league’s director of player discipline. Everything was looking up, but tragedy marred the summer, and has overshadowed the promise of the coming year. A plane carrying a Russian hockey team crashed on September 7th, killing everyone on board. The sudden and unnatural deaths of players Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien and Wade Belak shocked even those outside the hockey world. Boogard died by mixing alcohol with the painkiller Oxyxodone, Belak and Rypien, who both suffered from depression, took their own lives. While the three men were never teammates, and weren’t personally connected save for the sport they played professionally, they all shared one particular similarity: they were all called “enforcers.” If you’re not familiar with hockey lingo an enforcer is a player meant to go around fighting other players, and intimidating ones with games that are more finesse than physical. Enforcers have been called “goons” or “tough guys,” and vilified by many, including the game’s godfather, Wayne Gretzky, who has taken any chance he can get to speak out against league-sanctioned violence. But go to a hockey game in any arena, for any team, and the player with the biggest ovation during his introduction will be the player designated as the enforcer.
In other sports, if you throw a punch, you’re automatically ejected, and possibly suspended. In hockey, you’ll likely sit out five minutes, then get back on the ice, able to start another fight if and when you choose. In 1992, the NHL formally introduced “fisticuffs” related Rule 56, but has failed to ever even consider whether or not fighting should be banned altogether. When asked in 2007, current NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said, “what happens in fighting is something we need to look at just as we need to look at hits to the head. But we’re not looking to have a debate on whether fighting is good or bad or should be part of the game.” What Bettman was really trying to say is that fighting is really popular with the fans. He doesn’t personally condone it, but if he actually tried to have it banned, he’d quickly be collecting unemployment.
Don Cherry, on the other hand, thinks that even whispering about the end of the fight is a sin. During the October 6th installment of his long-running Hockey Night in Canada intermission show, Coach’s Corner, he took aim at three former enforcers who have spoken out against violence in the sport. Wearing one of his trademark tablecloth suits, Cherry verbally assaulted Stu Grimson, Chris Nilan and Jim Thomson, saying, “I did a little research. Since 1999, there’s been eight guys commit suicide and not one of them was a fighter. And when I played, I remember four guys commit the suicide. Not one of them was a fighter. But you jumped on this with both feet. You should’ve been ashamed of yourself.” He then continued to insult the former players, calling them “pukes,” “hypocrites,” “turncoats,” and rallied against anyone insinuating that violence and related physical injury lead to drug abuse. Cherry blatantly ignores the many documented instances of injured athletes becoming addicted to prescribed painkillers. In just one rant, Don Cherry goes from beloved cranky old man to the sports version of Rush Limbaugh: a finger pointing blowhard who thinks that if you aren’t with him, you’re against him, and if you’re against him, you’re betraying the holy game of hockey. As one fan told me, “If you don’t see it the Don Cherry way, people think you’re a Benedict Arnold.”
Adding gasoline to the fire, Stu Grimson, the former 6”6 left winger, formerly nicknamed “The Grim Reaper,” now working for a Nashville law firm, has threatened Cherry with legal action for his “baseless and slanderous”comments. If one of hockey’s most-feared players is considering “further recourse” through the courts for comments made about the violence he knowingly perpetrated throughout his fifteen-year career, there is clearly something wrong with the infrastructure of the sport. Grimson’s outcry serves only to underline the paradox plaguing the league: fighting is the greatest threat to hockey, but fighting is also the sport’s biggest draw. Critics allege that NHL is on the verge of an American breakthrough, with audiences increasing because of added television coverage, faster play, and the popularity of the annual outdoor “Winter Classic.” But how fast would that new audience jump ship if they knew that the players wouldn’t be fighting each other? How many fans would abandon the sport if the promise of violence were no longer a promise?
Sadly, the problem is strictly business. The guys at the top rightfully see their players as manpower, and when tasked with regulating game-related violence, are forced to consider the risks of safety as compared to the safety of their profit. Enforcers aren’t the most talented guys on the ice, but the draw they bring to the game is invaluable. But how much longer can the league send out enforcers knowing that a happy ending isn’t likely? It’s a question of how much are we willing to give up for the players who make their living getting punched in the head for the good of the sport.
Jason Diamond
Jason Diamond is the editor-in-chief of Jewcy.com, founding editor of Vol. 1 Brooklyn and an associate editor at Impose Magazine. He lives in Brooklyn among a collection ...
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