ROBSERVATIONS: NHL must curb on-ice violence
At what point does “just part of the game” end, and criminal violence begin?
That’s the decision the National Hockey League is faced with — yet again.
Hockey, a sport so known for violence that a college friend used to rent 90-minute long videos featuring nothing but on-the-ice brawls, is trying to recover after receiving another black eye (no pun intended) this week.
Todd Bertuzzi, an all-star forward who plays for the Vancouver Canucks, was suspended for the rest of the season, without pay, on Wednesday for an attack on Colorado Avalanche player Steve Moore during a game Monday night.
With the Avalanche leading 8-2, Bertuzzi hit Moore, from behind, in the side of the head, driving Moore’s head into the ice and breaking his neck. Moore landed face-first on the rock-hard surface, with all 245 pounds of Bertuzzi on top of him, and as a result received a broken neck, a concussion and numerous cuts on his face.
The incident, the most recent and most nasty of a string of on-ice assaults that seems to escalate every few years in the sport, has NHL players, coaches, analysts and officials abuzz all over the country.
Police in Vancouver are investigating Bertuzzi’s punch, marking the second time in four years police have looked into an incident stemming from NHL games in their cities.
According to the Associated Press, as well as Canucks players questioned about the incident, Bertuzzi’s punch appeared to be retaliation for an open-ice hit Moore delivered to Canucks captain Markus Naslund last month, knocking him out for three games. Vancouver players vowed to get even with Moore for that hit, which wasn’t penalized.
“It doesn’t matter what the score was, what the time was, what the place was, what the history was, there’s no room in our game for that,” Colorado coach Tony Granato said.
Ironically, it was the victim of the assault which allegedly provoked the sucker-punch — the Canucks’ Naslund — who was one of the first to defend Bertuzzi’s act.
“He tried to do something he thought was right for his team, to challenge someone,” Naslund told the AP. “He wanted to make a point that you don’t go out and hit our players.”
Bertuzzi’s hit, and the resulting suspension, brought back memories around the hockey community of Boston’s Marty McSorley, who was convicted of assault with a weapon for his February, 2000, attack on Donald Brashear with his hockey stick.
McSorley received an 18-month conditional discharge, similar to judicial diversion, and was suspended by the NHL for a year — a suspension from which the former Bruin, who was near the end of his career, never returned.
So there is a precedent in place, but is it right for criminal charges to stem from incidents occurring during the heat of competition? In this latest case, that’s something that’s up to the Vancouver police to decide.
The NHL must then decide where to draw the line between gamesmanship and league-sanctioned violence. It must use this latest case to show its players cheap shots, especially premeditated retaliations, will not be tolerated. And it must make that decision now, before it’s too late.
Because there’s a very fine line between the injuries suffered by Moore in Monday night’s hit, and something much more serious — deadly serious.