STOP THE FIGHTS NOW!!!!
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We need not summarize the game or discuss what led up to this horrible incident, that something like this happened at all is the story and it renders one of the world’s great sports a defenseless joke. In yesterday’s playoff action between the National Hockey League’s Boston Bruins and Carolina Hurricanes, Bruins defenseman, Aaron Ward left the game with a possible broken orbital bone after being sucker punched by Hurricane Scott Walker. The incident occurred with 2:47 left in the game. Almost as disgraceful is the reaction of Carolina coach, Paul Maurice, who joked that Walker might have “sore knuckles” and might have to sell his truck if a fine was imposed.
This is no laughing matter. All sports involve hot passions. Tempers flare, and fights break out, but it’s how each sport handles them that matters. Recently, one might think baseball could be starting to get a little too lax as the spectacle of bench clearing brawls erupt too frequently after a player gets hit by a ball or some other episode were taunts are exchanged but to quote my nephew who was still in elementary school when we attended an Orioles game in the early 90’s with Mike Mussina on the mound, “Baseball players fight like girls!” after a Seattle player charged the mound and soon about 25 players from each team were slugging it out. A couple players got more carried away than others, but it was a huge embarrassment for both teams and came darned close to ending Cal Ripken’s consecutive game streak as he sustained a twisted ankle.
The NFL and NBA have controls built into the game. Penalties are assessed that affect play on the field or court and flagrant violators are immediately tossed from the game. Of course the photo op which is said to have made NASCAR a television phenomenon was a fight between Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough after a late wreck in the 1979 Daytona 500, but these days NASCAR shows no patience for any kind of physical brouhahas assessing fines, point deductions, and if severe enough, suspensions.
The NHL is the one sport where fights not only seem to be tolerated; they appear to be accepted as part of the game. On any given night of competition, all most certainly, fisticuffs will break out at least at a couple of arenas. All kinds of flimsy excuses are passed off to dismiss this stupidity. “Hockey is a very intense sport. The players are so actively involved in the game; tempers are bound to flare up.” Surely, we could Google the subject and come up with all kinds of garbage, but it is what it is and what it is is inexcusable garbage period.
Few could argue one of the greatest moments in United States sports history was the American hockey team’s stunning upset victory over the highly favored Soviet Union in the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. In world play as demonstrated by Olympic competition, there is no place for brawling. In the United States and Canada, the standard joke about the NHL is, “I went to the fights and a hockey game broke out.”
Doesn’t that say it all? Doesn’t it appear that somehow that Vince McMahon of WWE wrestling is somehow operating behind the scenes staging these atrocities?
Clearly, the NHL continues to pay the price for its shenanigans but no one will call them out for their failures. After losing an entire season brought on by an owners’ lockout over labor issues, the NHL lost its first tier television coverage. The television networks failed to embrace hockey as a marketable sport worth the cost of investment. ESPN-ABC, CBS, Fox, and Turner, carriers of the vast majority of all sports coverage, kept their hands off. Only NBC, the absolute lowlifes of the major networks who have only Sunday Night Football and a handful of PGA events in their regular portfolio except when the Olympics roll around so they can shamelessly suck up to brutal dictators as they did in Red China last summer, would put NHL on over-the-air television on a very limited schedule. Comcast stepped forward having the resources through its network of regional sports networks, many of whom provide local coverage of NHL games, offered up a spot for cable coverage on its Outdoor Life (OLN) network which it rebranded as Versus as an attempt to be seen as a full-blown cable sports network. Of all the possible networks, however, Versus, is one that is often excluded from various cable and satellite packages reaching 20 million fewer viewers than ESPN. The 2007 Stanley Cup championship series set historically low ratings on NBC.
In the second half of the last century, fans spoke of four major sports, Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, and the National Hockey League. Can we clearly make that distinction any longer? There’s no doubt that NASCAR, the PGA tour, and even professional tennis have much broader audiences than the NBA.
The NHL still has a small but loyal following in some of its traditional cities particularly in Canada, but many have folded and moved south to mixed results. Currently, NHL teams in Phoenix, Atlanta, Tampa Bay, Miami, and Nashville have all been subjects of relocation rumors with some interest to attract teams back to Canada, possibly Hamilton, Ontario or another team in the Toronto area. Surely, some American ownership groups might risk obtaining an NHL team for the notoriety of fielding a sport that could give a city a sense of “big league” status as the Hurricanes provide the Raleigh-Durham area in North Carolina, the Mecca of college basketball. Las Vegas has tried to get on the list for all sports expansion talks.
Hockey is an incredible sport and could be very popular if it makes serious attempts to broaden its audience. However, as long as fights are a nightly occurrence and the playoff season seems longer than an already too long regular season, the NHL as an institution has serious work to do if it’s going to make up ground on its rival sports. Anyone who marveled at the level of skill and the intensity of the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics knows what potential this sport has, but that was almost thirty years ago. A big chunk of the 18 and up sports fans, some of the most dedicated being in their 20’s, have no idea what this historical event was all about.
This is our only expected coverage of the 2009 NHL playoffs. Our message to the NHL is come back when you’re serious about making your sport serious. This is not an attempt to impose political correctness, hardly. It’s an appeal for basic civility, and asking a sport to focus on the sport not its horrible distractions.
This is no laughing matter. All sports involve hot passions. Tempers flare, and fights break out, but it’s how each sport handles them that matters. Recently, one might think baseball could be starting to get a little too lax as the spectacle of bench clearing brawls erupt too frequently after a player gets hit by a ball or some other episode were taunts are exchanged but to quote my nephew who was still in elementary school when we attended an Orioles game in the early 90’s with Mike Mussina on the mound, “Baseball players fight like girls!” after a Seattle player charged the mound and soon about 25 players from each team were slugging it out. A couple players got more carried away than others, but it was a huge embarrassment for both teams and came darned close to ending Cal Ripken’s consecutive game streak as he sustained a twisted ankle.
The NFL and NBA have controls built into the game. Penalties are assessed that affect play on the field or court and flagrant violators are immediately tossed from the game. Of course the photo op which is said to have made NASCAR a television phenomenon was a fight between Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough after a late wreck in the 1979 Daytona 500, but these days NASCAR shows no patience for any kind of physical brouhahas assessing fines, point deductions, and if severe enough, suspensions.
The NHL is the one sport where fights not only seem to be tolerated; they appear to be accepted as part of the game. On any given night of competition, all most certainly, fisticuffs will break out at least at a couple of arenas. All kinds of flimsy excuses are passed off to dismiss this stupidity. “Hockey is a very intense sport. The players are so actively involved in the game; tempers are bound to flare up.” Surely, we could Google the subject and come up with all kinds of garbage, but it is what it is and what it is is inexcusable garbage period.
Few could argue one of the greatest moments in United States sports history was the American hockey team’s stunning upset victory over the highly favored Soviet Union in the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. In world play as demonstrated by Olympic competition, there is no place for brawling. In the United States and Canada, the standard joke about the NHL is, “I went to the fights and a hockey game broke out.”
Doesn’t that say it all? Doesn’t it appear that somehow that Vince McMahon of WWE wrestling is somehow operating behind the scenes staging these atrocities?
Clearly, the NHL continues to pay the price for its shenanigans but no one will call them out for their failures. After losing an entire season brought on by an owners’ lockout over labor issues, the NHL lost its first tier television coverage. The television networks failed to embrace hockey as a marketable sport worth the cost of investment. ESPN-ABC, CBS, Fox, and Turner, carriers of the vast majority of all sports coverage, kept their hands off. Only NBC, the absolute lowlifes of the major networks who have only Sunday Night Football and a handful of PGA events in their regular portfolio except when the Olympics roll around so they can shamelessly suck up to brutal dictators as they did in Red China last summer, would put NHL on over-the-air television on a very limited schedule. Comcast stepped forward having the resources through its network of regional sports networks, many of whom provide local coverage of NHL games, offered up a spot for cable coverage on its Outdoor Life (OLN) network which it rebranded as Versus as an attempt to be seen as a full-blown cable sports network. Of all the possible networks, however, Versus, is one that is often excluded from various cable and satellite packages reaching 20 million fewer viewers than ESPN. The 2007 Stanley Cup championship series set historically low ratings on NBC.
In the second half of the last century, fans spoke of four major sports, Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, and the National Hockey League. Can we clearly make that distinction any longer? There’s no doubt that NASCAR, the PGA tour, and even professional tennis have much broader audiences than the NBA.
The NHL still has a small but loyal following in some of its traditional cities particularly in Canada, but many have folded and moved south to mixed results. Currently, NHL teams in Phoenix, Atlanta, Tampa Bay, Miami, and Nashville have all been subjects of relocation rumors with some interest to attract teams back to Canada, possibly Hamilton, Ontario or another team in the Toronto area. Surely, some American ownership groups might risk obtaining an NHL team for the notoriety of fielding a sport that could give a city a sense of “big league” status as the Hurricanes provide the Raleigh-Durham area in North Carolina, the Mecca of college basketball. Las Vegas has tried to get on the list for all sports expansion talks.
Hockey is an incredible sport and could be very popular if it makes serious attempts to broaden its audience. However, as long as fights are a nightly occurrence and the playoff season seems longer than an already too long regular season, the NHL as an institution has serious work to do if it’s going to make up ground on its rival sports. Anyone who marveled at the level of skill and the intensity of the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics knows what potential this sport has, but that was almost thirty years ago. A big chunk of the 18 and up sports fans, some of the most dedicated being in their 20’s, have no idea what this historical event was all about.
This is our only expected coverage of the 2009 NHL playoffs. Our message to the NHL is come back when you’re serious about making your sport serious. This is not an attempt to impose political correctness, hardly. It’s an appeal for basic civility, and asking a sport to focus on the sport not its horrible distractions.
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