Don
Sanderson could have been a Kitchener Ranger. Instead, the hockey
player who died in early January of injuries sustained after falling
and hitting his bare head during a fight has become the catalyst for
another round in the debate about fighting's place in the game.
Sanderson,
a defenceman, was drafted in the 14th round, 280th overall, by
Kitchener in 2003. He was the next to last pick by the Rangers from the
Clarington (east of Oshawa) bantams, with next to no chance of making
the club.
But Sanderson's legacy could be more important than
making an Ontario Hockey League team. His death, while tragic and
preventable, has given hockey a chance to examine itself. And in
talking about Sanderson -- who made it as far as the Rangers' rookie
evaluation camp --with Rangers coach and general manager Steve Spott,
one is left with the impression of a sport in conflict with itself.
Spott
subscribes to the so-called "safety valve" aspect of fighting while at
the same time acknowledging that tragedies -- or near ones -- can
occur. Spott knows Nick Kypreos, the player turned broadcaster whose
NHL career came to an ugly end thanks to a concussion. Kypreos was
knocked out and fell face-first to the ice, in a pool of his own blood,
during a fight in a pre-season game with Ryan Vandenbussche of the New
York Rangers in 1997.
"I've seen it, like Nick, and it makes you sick," Spott said. "I don't think anyone is a fan of it."
Yet, though some cracks have appeared, the hockey mentality remains that fighting is a necessary part of the game.
"You can put rules in but I'm telling you, you'll never stop it," Spott said. "It's an emotional sport."
Rules
have been implemented. The Ontario Hockey League recently adopted a
rule forbidding fighting without a helmet. League commissioner David
Branch has been praised for what in hockey constitutes visionary
thinking, though a skeptic might suggest Branch is trying to cover some
bases just in case some day, the OHL faces a Sanderson scenario and
with it a lawsuit.
Meanwhile, NHL Players Association executive
director Paul Kelly has reconsidered his earlier stance against a
helmet rule for the NHL. He joined NHL enforcer Georges Laracque of the
Montreal Canadiens in suggesting last week that consideration be given
to helmet regulations with respect to fighting.
Yet a
contradiction exists. The hockey establishment advocates addressing a
lack of respect surrounding hits to the head, yet continues to permit
its players to punch each other in the head.
There is, apparently, a difference.
When
two players fight, Spott suggested, it's a case of two willing
combatants trading blows, as opposed to people "taking liberties with
shots to the head" during the regular course of game action.
For
every argument on this issue, there is a parallel counter. Those who
insist that fighting is necessary to prevent worse on-ice mayhem
forget, for instance, that the infamous Todd Bertuzzi revenge attack on
Steve Moore came after Moore abided by hockey's "code" when he fought
Bertuzzi's then-teammate Matt Cooke earlier in the same game. Trouble
was, Moore won that fight so more action was called for.
It is
often suggested that issuing game misconducts for fighting would solve
the problem. The counter is that game misconducts would fuel fighting
as strategy: Players whose job it is to fight would goad
fighting-capable stars into ejection, giving the opposition a
competitive advantage.
So why carry such players? Well, er, they
fill roster spots in overexpanded leagues and prevent others from
"taking liberties." And they're essentially harmless because they fight
only each other -- and usually just during the regular season because
they barely see the ice in the playoffs and aren't even on rosters in
elite events like the Olympics.
It seems a tortured logic common
to a sport that, to quote Winston Churchill, is often a puzzle inside a
riddle wrapped in an enigma. On the flip side, there is an accepted
hierarchy with respect to fights: heavyweights fight heavyweights, and
so on.
And spontaneous fighting will always exist, as Spott
maintains. Just as one will always see the occasional beanball war in
baseball, brawl in basketball or head hits resulting in serious injury
to the point of paralysis in football.
It's the staged fighting
-- often, let's face it, fuelled by media reports -- that most people
want to see eliminated. Others embrace it as pure entertainment
tempered by the occasional scary moment considered acceptable risk by
the participants.
Things like the fight off the opening faceoff
that saw an American Hockey League player sent to hospital recently
after suffering convulsions.
Or London Knights and Windsor
Spitfires heavyweights doing the same thing off the puck drop last
Friday night. And then having two other combatants reprise the rumble
at the very next whistle before the two elite OHL squads got down to
the business of actually playing the game.
It's a game forced to re-examine what Spott considers the complex issue of fighting in the wake of Sanderson's death.
"Now
it's happened," Spott said. "And as hockey people, we're all looking at
it (fighting) But change will be gradual. The question is, where do we
go with the enforcement of it?"
Hopefully somewhere that prevents another Sanderson scenario.
