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Don’t damn the game for the odd savage haiku
Kootenay Crust
Hello, my name is Ian and I am an addict. A hockey addict – specifically a National Hockey League addict.
And baby, am I getting a sonic fix right now!
It is the time of year when a general madness overcomes the Canadian population. The playoffs! Some of the madness is derived from merely being a Toronto Maple Leafs fan. It’s a form of self mutilation and great sympathy is to be felt for such a soul.
A similar madness has overcome our friends in Alberta lately, as the Edmonton Oilers (with a towering future ahead of them) and Calgary Flames (hello, rebuild) are once again shining their putters and cleaning their gutters.
Winnipeg, always mad about something, is more like a gleeful beating victim, grateful to be alive and looking forward to revenge.
And Montreal – oh my, don’t mention them right now. That’s just sad.
The heart of the madness comes from the explosive passion so many millions of Canadians have for the greatest game in the world. Fans in Ottawa and Vancouver are personifying the madness, for the time being. If they move forward toward Stanley Cup glory, the intensity of the madness will grow. Reference: Vancouver Riot 2011 for a skewed look. I say skewed because the rioters weren’t hockey fans. They were idiots I wish a gang of true hockey fans would have shit-stomped for their empty-headed loutishness.
It is a madness we Canadian hockey addicts share because what else could explain the toleration of savage violence perpetrated at high speed?
Every hockey addict is currently immersed in the hand ringing, howling, blithering and blathering of ‘what’s causing all the uber-violence?’ Eight players have thus far been suspended for various fits of on-ice assault and the Coyotes’ Raffi Torres is set to become the ninth for his descendants-jarring hit on Chicago star Marian Hossa.
Under the rules of the game now, Torres’ hit was illegal. To me, the only thing he did wrong was leave his feet, and that was caused by the speed of the play and the sudden change in direction that turned him into a missile and Hossa into the HMS Sheffield.
Thankfully, Hossa appears to be fine after being removed from the ice on a stretcher. The screaming hasn’t stopped since, though. Torres has been called the game’s worst “punk” by some dimbulb Leaf-lovin’ hack scribe and The Hockey News’ resident know-it-all but never-played-the-game Ken Campbell is Chicken Littling like the shrillest of mincing tools.
The fact is, Torres is a repeat offender and he shall suffer the wrath for being one. In last year’s playoffs he savagely decked Hawks’ star blueliner Brent Seabrook and this year he torpedoes the Hawks’ leading scorer Marian Hossa. And he shall now be hung in public by a rattled former tough hockey player, likely hating his job, Brendan Shanahan, who shit the bed at the start of the playoffs when he let Shea Weber (a fine former KIJHL star) walk for turn-buckling Henrik Zetterberg at the start of the great angry dash.
That combined with the pre-playoff histrionics between the Philadelphia Flyers and Pittsburgh Penguins set the stage for the most spirited first round in many, many seasons.
Yes, the nasty and cheap is back in fashion, it seems. As an addict, I don’t like the cheap or the stupid and I can’t stand the theatrics that merely shows immaturity, petulance and the lower IQ of the players who perform them. But paint me with your brushes if you must, but I totally dig the nasty!
As many players have said to twitching microphone hands, ‘it’s the playoffs.’
Somewhere between the over-the-top Broad Street Bullies and the return of play after the last player lockout, the NHL has lost its way.
Players, like Torres, who is 30, were trained to play as they do. Torres made the NHL because he brought not bad skill with some speed and a whole passel of ‘one-tick-from-total-lunacy’ passion to his play. In short, he’s the ultimate Canadian-trained hockey player. We do love to eat our own, though.
Hockey, and not just the NHL, has many issues to deal with. The science of concussions means there is much, much more focus on head shots and for good reason. Don’t screw with science. Don’t mess with your brain.
Easy for me to say. Now. I couldn’t tell you how many concussions I have had. Back in ‘the day’ you fought off the dizzies and the pukes and you played until you passed out. Then when you woke up, after smelling salts were applied to your nasal passages, you went back out and showed your ‘courage’ and ‘pluck’ and ‘told the coach you’d do whatever it took to win.’
That is the mindset of hockey players and it is no different now than ‘back in the day,’ when NHL hockey was FAR FAR FAR more violent than it is today.
It seems more violent today because players are bigger and faster, and they’re wearing lighter equipment that is so hard that it is THE EQUIPMENT that is causing all the damage. Concussions are now considered among the worst injuries a player can suffer, when a mere 10 years ago they were considered a minor annoyance.
What is happening in this year’s playoffs, so far, is the world’s best players ratcheting their levels of play and hate up in order to overcome the mirror ratchetings on the other team.
Hockey is a violent game. There isn’t a man-Jack in the NHL right now, whether earning a paltry $550,000 or $8 million, who doesn’t realize that his career could end on the next shift. THAT IS WHY they make the big freaking bucks.
There are always jerks. If you have a group of 23 guys, the odds of there being at least one major asshole or jerk are extremely high. Additionally, in that same group of 23 guys, the likelihood of one of them being prone to fits of violence, especially when they’re between the ages of 18 and 40, is toweringly strong. Those averages play out on the ice when everything is on the line.
If the NHL found a way to cut down on the ‘armor’ aspect of equipment, it would cut down on injuries derived from hits delivered at high speed in the blink of an eye in a game that moves so fast a second is an eternity, by players trained to deliver and take such hits.
If you remove the violence from hockey, you pour wee wee on a campfire. I’m not talking about fighting. Most hockey fights are staged theatrics and, well, I hate theatrics. But the fights that spring out of the heat of play can only be described as things that cannot be fathomed by people who have never played the game.
If you have never put in a lung-burning 80 second shift, sprinting from one end of the ice to another and then back again, being jostled and bumped and impeded, and then received a stick in the ribs or a chop to the back of an ankle and you ‘react’ to the source of that pain, you can’t understand how primal homo sapien bursts forth. And you should be watching soccer.
I am really enjoying this year’s National Hockey League playoffs. We are not seeing anything new and there is no need to weep for change. We are seeing awesome parity from all 16 teams. We are seeing the top dogs in the east and west being pushed to the brink of elimination by lower ranked clubs. We are seeing unbelievable goaltending and eye-popping plays. We are seeing high speed, end-to-end poetry with the odd savage haiku thrown in as part of the strategy to win.
As Don ‘the fat-collared blustering buffoon Neanderthal’ Cherry would say: that’s hockey baby!
Just remember to keep your heads up, boys.
Ian Cobb/e-KNOW
