Your Voice
Comment about Damien Cox's article, March 23, 2004

Response to Damien Cox (Read the full article)
from Watchdog - Blaine H.

"It is truly tragic when a young hockey player's misfortune becomes an excuse for an otherwise forgettable and mediocre hockey "writer" (the term is an oxymoron) to clamber up onto his soapbox and decry the Canadian game in the name of good, old-fashioned political correctness.

Blaming Canadian hockey for the ills of the professional game has been popular sport for as long as I can remember (and it's usually most forcefully articulated by those who have never played the game or coached it) but the recent self-righteous bullshit has reached a new level of stridency.

The simple reality is that viciousness in hockey is not primarily the preserve of Canadian players or of a peculiar "fight-friendly" Canadian hockey culture - and that viewpoint needs to be brought forward, however unpopular it may be. Former Montreal Canadiens star Mats Naslund once commented that the Russians were the worst players in the world for kicking with their skates (and spitting) and anyone who has seen the Czechs in action internationally is - or should be - well aware of their penchant for spearing, butt-ending and all-around reckless use of a hockey stick (Martin Havlat is a good example of this sort of mentality although he is certainly not the only example).

As someone who played hockey against European teams in his younger days, I quickly - and quite painfully - discovered that the Russian, Czech Republic, and Swedish approach to "getting even" is not a gloved punch to the face but a well-placed stick to the back of the leg while an opponent is in that dangerous area near the boards. Yet, because Canadian hockey places a premium on fighting (an activity that is all too obvious to unintelligent hockey writers or to the sport's neophytes) the Canadian game is unfairly branded as advocating violence to a far greater degree than its European cousin; not surprisingly - as a Canadian and as a former hockey player - my view is an altogether different one.

Unlike the media Pharisees, I would argue that the only difference between the two hockey schools is that, for the most part, European hockey violence is more subtle and insidious than the violence we see over here. That usually translates into a dirtier game that poo-poohs fighting but tacitly and (at least in the case of Eastern Europeans) not so tacitly condones stick work, periodic kicking and appallingly irresponsible play. Simply put, opponents of fighting are victims of a simplistic, reductionist logic that unwaveringly holds that removing fighting from the game of hockey will also remove violence from the game of hockey; nothing could be further from the truth. What fighting does - except in those instances when it is ripped from its proper context by a machiavellian like Fred Shero - is to keep players "honest" by holding them accountable to one another in a manner that simultaneously discourages stick work, kicking and hits from behind; without a hockey "culture" that pressures grown men to settle their differences as men rather than as rats armed with dangerous implements, more destructive and frightening violence involving European-style pitch forking and kicking is allowed to flourish (and I've seen that sort of violence - and its occasionally tragic consequences - up close as both a participant and as a coach).

Nothing that I've written above, of course, absolves the actions of Bertuzzi, Belak or Messier; what they did was wrong and downright embarrassing. But when I watch the lumber-fest that often accompanies European hockey games (and when I also consider the strong measures that Hockey Canada has taken in recent years to make the sport safer and more enjoyable in this country) I can't help but think that simple-minded hockey writers like traditional targets of convenience (in this case, our Canadian hockey culture) because it saves them from the burden of having to actually think before they put pen to paper. Frankly, as a longtime hockey fan who has often shaken his head at the ignorance of those who cover the Canadian game for a living, I've come to learn that insight the hard way as well.

P.S: By the way, to compare hockey "chauvinism" with the iniquitous hyper-nationalism of the Balkans is about as simplistic and inappropriate an analogy as one can possibly make (although certainly not out of character for you)."