Here’s what I cannot imagine. I cannot imagine skating full bore, at maybe 25 miles an hour, or faster even, with a stick in my hands and a little frozen rubber disk called a puck on the ice at the end of the stick.
Furthermore, I cannot conceive of the skill required to then lay a perfect, flat pass – without breaking stride — to another guy about 60 feet away, also going 25 miles an hour on skates with a stick, and then having a return pass come right back at me, also flat and flawless. And all of that taking into account, in a mere whisker of an instant, the calculus of speed and distance which must then be converted to an assessment, not of where the other guy is at that moment but how much farther up the ice he’ll be in a half second or so, and putting the pass right there. And then having him do the same thing with the return, also in a half second, give or take.
Let me repeat: I cannot envisage the sheer and pure artistry required to play our game at its highest level, leaving aside the ultimate objective which is to now cut toward the net, spot a pocket sized opening, instinctively aim and then shoot the puck right into and past that little space. That’s the point at which Foster Hewitt used to shout into his microphone “He shoots, he scores,” and countless play-by-play announcers who came after Hewitt have taken his phrase as their own.
I played hockey as a kid, but wasn’t much good. Outdoor rinks, mostly, and I laboured up and down, over on my ankles, managed to turn right but never could get the hang of turning left, little crusts of frost under my nose, every so often putting one between the posts (no nets at the school rink) and attracting no attention whatsoever from the coaches in organized pee wee or bantam or midget hockey. I was like a tractor clunking and churning around: no talent, no aptitude, but I was out there every night.
I never got into a fight (and I don’t remember any of the other guys getting into fights) because no kid ever made me so angry as to contemplate getting it on, and because we all figured hockey was a game to be played for the unrestrained joy and fun of it. And I’ve thought for a very long time now it’s probably a good thing I had almost no ability, because perhaps I would actually have been recruited by one of those pee wee or bantam coaches and then the indoctrination would have started about the code.
The code. It’s a menacing and by definition vicious charter, not written down anywhere, but imbuing hockey players with a conviction that fighting and frequent brutality are ingrained and essential. Code defenders, which is to say just about every coach, GM, and player in every league up to and including the NHL, insist there have to be enforcers, who in street parlance would be known as punks or goons. They have to protect the skilled players, you see, ride shotgun for them, and make sure the other team understands there’ll be no messing with our actual hockey players because if you do, you’ll pay the price. We’ll ship one of our knuckle draggers off the bench and beat the hell out of whoever dared lay into one of our stars, or regulars for all that, just so you get the point.
The latest embodiment of the code is a 27-year-old minor league lifer named Pascal Morency, whose hockey career has been a wandering odessy through third and second tier leagues, but who apparently warrants an occasional look from the NHL because he’s a fighter. On the evidence of his resume, Morency can’t skate or shoot or stickhandle, or think as nearly as I can tell, but last week during a New York Islander exhibition game against the Calgary Flames, he launched himself off the bench and went after Dion Phaneuff.
The NHL rules, or some of them at any rate, are clear: thou shalt not leave the bench to engage in combat, so Morency was nailed with an eight-game suspension encompassing three further exhibition games, and the first five of the regular NHL season.
But the point is this: throwing a suspension at a guy like Morency is neither here nor there, because he wasn’t going to be playing in the NHL regular season anyway: his name isn’t on the final Islander roster. But even so, he’s the code personified, and so Morency was cheered and congratulated by the other Islander players. Stick up for your teammates: that’s the way they think, because the code actually becomes part of the hockey player mentality, and in extreme cases, personality.
So here’s the question, I think. The first of two, actually. If the NHL and indeed all of professional hockey weren’t held hostage by this ethos, this strange form of territorial stalking which demands adherence through mindless violence and fighting, would the game begin to fail and ultimately cease to exist?
I don’t think so, at least not for Canadians and Europeans, because it would very quickly become that marvellous arabesque of speed and skill to which I referred at the beginning of this essay. There is, however, a marketing issue at hand: because of its fervent determination to sell hockey in the United States, make it work down there, the NHL doesn’t want to accept the risk of banning fighting. The reason for that is plain: a lot of American fans, not particularly familiar with the game, and certainly not with how remarkable it can be, look upon hockey as nothing but fighting.
That’s one reason, I expect, why the internet is laden with websites such as Hockeyfights.com, Hockey KO Complations, the Most Unbelievable Hockey Fight Ever. I stopped logging those sites, nearly all based in the United States, after 40 pages, with no end in sight. But internet hockey locales devoted only to the game and its best players? Nowhere near 40. Not even close.
Second question. If the enforcers are such a vital ingredient of a professional hockey team, why is it that starting with about the fifth game of an NHL playoff series, and on into the sixth and seventh, the gorillas never get on the ice? Seems to me the answer is self-evident: they sit on the bench because now there’s a lot more on the line than letting the other team know who’s toughest, who’s boss. One team has to prove to the other it can actually play better hockey, so the thugs don’t get the first glimmer of a shift.
That’s why I never miss, ever, the final two or three games of a playoff series because I know the apes, useless baggage with the Stanley Cup at stake, will be exiled when skating and scoring, and winning, really matter.
Regular season? I can take it or leave it, but I’ll tell you this. If I’m taking it, watching a televised game at home, I frequently get right into it, and there’s no fooling with the remote. Come the enforcer, though, the fight, I’m heading to the fridge for a beer, or the kitchen counter for a coffee. Can’t be bothered, because of that dreary code extolling violence and fighting.
I suppose the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs back in the 1930s started it all. Conn Smythe said of hockey players “if you can’t beat ‘em in the alley, you can’t beat ‘em on the ice.” And then another well-known quote surfaced a few years back, about how this guy went to the Friday night fights, and a hockey game broke out.
Whoever came up with that bit probably thought it was funny. Sorry. I don’t. I think it’s accurate, and symbolic of a wonderful game in thrall to the code. The way I see it, hockey isn’t what it could be and for a lot of people like me, should be.
Conn Smythe was wrong, but after 70 odd years, the NHL still thinks he was right.