SAN JOSE, Calif. — Ten days ago, on the morning the report that found Bob Probert had suffered a degenerative brain disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy was published, Derek Boogaard made an appearance in the Rangers locker room at the training facility in Tarrytown.
It was a skate on a game day, but Boogaard would neither go on the ice nor participate in that night’s match against the Wild, as he remained sidelined with a concussion he sustained in a Dec. 9 fight in Ottawa against Matt Carkner.
The pugilist, who was hired by Glen Sather for $6.5 million to box the NHL’s other heavyweights, was asked whether he had seen the report.
His answer with a semi-shrug: “Live by the sword, die by the sword.”
Is that the epitaph Boogaard — and Boogaard’s family — would really want? Is that the epitaph any of the league’s fighters want?
Any of its players?
Is that the epitaph the NHL wants for itself?
Fighting is one thing and hits to the head are another, you maintain, until you recognize the absurdity of such a position.
Hits to the head from the blind side are one thing and hits to the head during a puck battle are another, you insist, until you recognize the absurdity of that position.
An elbow to the head is a penalty, the rule book mandates, but a forearm to the head is a hockey play, we have learned, except the brain makes no such distinctions.
A player who stumbles, loses control of his stick and accidentally draws a trickle of blood on contact with an opponent receives an automatic four-minute penalty, but a player who unintentionally plants a shoulder into an opponent’s head, concussing him, gets away scot-free.
Voices speak up ridiculing the fact that more attention than ever is being paid to concussions in the NHL because Sidney Crosby sustained one and has been out for months and who knows for how much longer, as if that’s somehow out of place.
Commissioner Gary Bettman issues pronouncements ridiculing a civic watchdog group that is attempting to protect taxpayers by ensuring that the law is followed in Glendale, Ariz., yet when it comes to the safety of the players in his league … crickets.
There is nowhere to hide on the rink, there are no out-of-bounds markers. Players are at risk every time they step onto the ice. It’s the essence of hockey.
But at what price and since when did blows to the head become something that is so intrinsic to the game that eliminating them, eliminating every single one of them, would somehow alter the fabric of the sport all of us participating in this forum love so deeply?
Brian Burke, who no doubt cares passionately about the safety of every player in the league, as does every general manager, even the ones who defend indefensible acts from their own athletes while decrying those of the opposition, continues to warn that eliminating or penalizing north-south incidental checks to the head would change the fundamental nature of the game.
Yet the fundamental nature of the game is ever evolving. When I started going to games, fights in the penalty box — one penalty box, in the stands, players separated by one guard — at the old Garden between Vic Hadfield and Henri Richard were routine, as were bench-clearing brawls.
A defenseman hammering away with vicious cross checks to an opponent in front in order to clear him from the crease was once part of the fundamental nature of the game. Now it’s against the rules. The game has survived just fine, even if Mike Milbury the voice of hockey on NBC — what is it with these networks hiring extremists? — thinks the game is becoming by pansies, of pansies and for pansies.
Hockey can be a primal experience, no doubt about that, and I admit to being enthralled by the throwback-to-the-’70s Bruins-Canadiens donnybrook in Montreal last month, and I admit to hoping for that matchup in the playoffs, but not if any of that would come at the expense of the health of Max Pacioretty or any athlete on either side.
And though the whole world was retroactively watching the regrettable Zdeno Chara-Pacioretty incident on Tuesday that has created an uproar across Canada and within the hockey community, only a very tiny slice of the population took notice when Mike Komisarek’s crosscheck put Daniel Carcillo into the boards from behind on a play that certainly could have broken the Flyer’s neck.
Here on Thursday night, the Canucks and Sharks played a 5-4 game of such pace and passion it immediately has been acknowledged as one of the greatest and most entertaining games ever played in San Jose. There were no fights.
Last Jan. 12 at the Garden, the Devils and Rangers played a 1-0 shootout game that featured a combined 96 shots on goal that was the artistic highlight of both teams’ seasons. There were four minor penalties in the game.
Hits to the head, fighting: separate but equal, for the brain does not discriminate, as NHL general managers somehow posit as they prepare for a two-day meeting in Boca Raton, Fla., tomorrow that will draw unprecedented attention.
There will be progressives at the table, there will be reactionaries talking loudly, there will be ideologues at work.
Yet if the NHL sticks its head in the sand, if the NHL refuses to act to ban the headshots that have become a plague on the sport and threaten the well-being of its remarkably talented athletes, the headline one day will be:
“Lived by the sword, died by the sword.”
Is that what anyone wants?
