I’ve never been much of a hockey fan, and the only time I really work up any enthusiasm for it is if the Buffalo Sabres somehow make it to one of the deeper rounds in the NHL playoffs. I find the game tough to watch on TV (“Where the hell is the puck?!”), I don’t see enough nuance in the game to bother figuring out the more obscure rules (every time things get going nicely and I think, “OK, this might be cool”, suddenly someone blows a whistle, everything stops, and the announcer says, “Ooooooh, so-and-so called for icing” or “Whosis crosses the blue line!”), and the game’s love-and-sometimes-hate relationship with violence really turns me off. What’s the damned point about fighting in hockey? Other sports don’t need it. It’s stupid, macho, idiot crap, and it’s no reason to watch a sport. If I wanted to watch a fight, I’d watch boxing. Or a 1970s Clint Eastwood movie.
So I haven’t been paying much attention at all to hockey this year, which is why I didn’t hear about a violent incident that apparently took place the other night: one player literally came up behind another one and cold-cocked him in the back of the head, sending him first into unconsciousness on the ice and then to the hospital with a broken neck.
I was listening to the Jim Rome Show on the radio a bit ago, and Rome had an interview with some hockey journalist or something who made the usual demands for very strict punishment — a year’s suspension, say — and speculating on the problems this causes for hockey as a sport. In the midst of this, this hockey-guy points out that this event was likely precipitated by some bad blood between the same two teams dating to a previous incident several weeks ago, and then he says: “If this were a legal case, it wouldn’t be hard to prove premeditation.”
“IF this were a legal case.”
To which I immediately think, “Why the hell isn’t this a legal case?!”
Somehow, I suspect that if I walked up behind some coworker at The Store and punched him in such a way as to give him a concussion and result in hospitalization, I wouldn’t be looking at a year’s suspension from my job. And yet, no punishment has as yet been announced by the NHL on this guy, and to my knowledge, no charges have been filed (although they may come).
As far as I am concerned, this player should not be suspended for a year. He should be banned from the game for life, and that should be the least of his problems anyway, because he should also be awaiting trial for assault.
(last paragraph edited so it makes sense)
