Today, all three national newspapers in Canada ran photos of the Todd Bertuzzi incident from Monday night. Bertuzzi, a forward for the Vancouver Canucks, sucker-punched Steve Moore of the Colorado Avalanche at the end of Monday night's contest, as retaliation for a hit Moore delivered on Canucks forward Markus Naslund earlier in the season. Naslund missed several games with a concussion, as a result of the hit. After punching Moore in the head, Bertuzzi drove his face into the ice. Moore's neck was fractured and he received a concussion. The Vancouver police are investigating the incident.
Moore's father called the incident "a dark moment for hockey." This evening Bertuzzi issued a tearful apology.
Undoubtedly, the Bertuzzi incident was the topic of discussion across Canada today. It's difficult to find an American analogy to explain the prominence of an event like this in the sport of hockey, because America is so much larger than Canada, and as a result it supports several sports fanatically. In Canada, there is hockey, and there is everything else.
In my mind, the Bertuzzi incident raises at least the following questions: How long should Bertuzzi's suspension be? Is the incident indicative of broader trends in the game? Is the incident justification for a ban on fighting in hockey (keeping in mind that this was not a "fight" but a surprise assault)?
First, if the NHL does not ban Bertuzzi for at least the rest of the season and the playoffs, it will be an insult to Steve Moore, an insult to the professionals who play hockey, and an insult to the fans. Personally, I think he should be banned for at least 1 year. In a more perfect world, he would be banned for as long as Moore is injured. It is possible that Moore will never play hockey again.
Second, the incident is not indicative of broader trends in hockey. This is an anomalous incident. Yes, similar acts of goonery have happened before. But I don't believe the NHL is in any way approaching a state of Slapshot-like parody. That said, I do think the NHL is the most barbaric professional sports league on the planet. Incidents like this just don't happen in other sports. Damien Cox of the Toronto Star sums up the unfortunate mentality that rules hockey:
That line heard over and over yesterday was that Bertuzzi's unprovoked, unwarranted and cowardly attack on Colorado's Steve Moore two nights ago that left Moore with a fractured neck was an "unfortunate" incident.
Unfortunate? Try sickening, despicable and an affront to the sport.
But you won't hear that from this league, an environment in which goalies were once labelled as sissies for wearing masks and players thought of as less-than-manly for wearing helmets.
You won't hear a player or coach or GM or union rep stand up and call for justice on behalf of Moore. You likely won't hear any significant figures in the sport demand the NHL put an end to these vicious incidents that every two or three years lands one of the league's players in a criminal court.
You will only hear excuses and clichés and silence and empty apologies.
It's all part of a sick, age-old hockey mentality. A running back in football can cut through a hole and get drilled by a middle linebacker, and then shake off the blow and retreat to his huddle.
He doesn't demand that a player on his own team cross to the other huddle and challenge that linebacker to a fight.
In hockey, however, every clean hit is an insult to be avenged.
Every issue, to those who believe in this culture, is best resolved with fists.
You hit our guy, we high-stick you.
You knock our guy out, we put your guy in the hospital.
As long as that remains the dominant mentality, people like Steve Moore will have to suffer now and then.
Canadians have to take responsibility for this mentality. This is not America's fault (a popular choice for Canadians, on all manner of subjects). For some reason, hockey culture retains the kind of violent populist barbarism that usually gets filtered from other sports for the sake of selling it to the kids, or simply because society's standards in these matters have improved.
Third, the Bertuzzi incident should not be the reason to ban fighting in hockey. Fighting in hockey should be banned regardless. No other sport allows its participants to beat the hell out of each other while the officials stand around and watch (unless beating the hell out of people is the point of the sport, of course). Hockey is the only professional sport that retains such a stupid allowance.
Proponents of fighting, and apologists for Bertuzzi, will say there has to be some form of violent retribution allowed to act as a deterrent for violent retribution. It's a Cold War mentality in hockey that says, If fighting is allowed, players will avoid stepping out of line because they know they will be taken to task by the other players. You don't hit the goalie because you know you will be mobbed by the other players.
In hockey's antiquated culture, the rules are so ineffectual that built into them is an allowance for self-policing.
As soccer fans, I'm sure, would say, If you just make the infractions that lead to fighting, and fighting itself, illegal and punishable by suspension, you eliminate the need for fighting. Instead of five minutes for fighting, just suspend the players for a game. Soon, none will fight because it won't make any sense.
But this leads to more stick infractions, say people like Don Cherry. Well, then, penalize high sticking with more severe penalties. And on it goes. The apologists who suggest incidents like the Bertuzzi assault on Steve Moore will happen no matter what rules are created and enforced are assuming a kind of fatalism that rules are created to counter in the first place.
Why doesn't hockey change? I think it's because the people who could change it are so entrenched in its attitudes that they find such changes inconceivable. It's like when the police are asked to investigate themselves, and the internal culture of the institution overrides the considerations of outsiders. They take care of their own. Hockey's a similarly hyper-masculine institution in Canada, with grass roots support perhaps unimaginable for other sports in other countries. To these people, to many of the hockey dads out there, if you remove fighting from hockey, you remove a little piece of what makes a Canadian man a man.
Perhaps the analogy I'm looking for is this: Banning fighting in hockey is like asking NRA members to surrender their guns.
Unfortunately for Steve Moore, the barbaric mentality that rules hockey, the right to fight, may cost him his career, and it almost cost him his life.
12:35:06 AM 
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