The inevitable happened and a hockey player is battling for his life after fighting on the ice. Now will the NHL finally open its eyes and do something about it?

During their weekday radio show on the Fan 590 in Toronto host Jack Armstrong asked co-host Doug MacLean just what the family of injured senior hockey player Don Sanderson must be going through as they stood vigil by his bedside in a Hamilton-area hospital.

Their son is in a coma and literally fighting for his life, the result of injuries suffered in a hockey fight Friday night. There is concern he may be permanently paralyzed. There is a fear he might not survive at all. The family has gathered at the 21-year-old's side praying for the best, fearing the worst.

MacLean, the former coach, general manager and president of the Columbus Blue Jackets of the National Hockey League, an intelligent and well-spoken man who has been involved in hockey at every level for longer than the Sanderson's son has been alive, answered:" I can't begin to imagine."

MacLean acknowledged that, like a lot of his National Hockey League colleagues, he has agonized over the role of fighting in hockey and what role the NHL might have in eliminating it, but he also conceded that he never once raised his voice to speak out against it.

You could sense in his voice that right now he perhaps regrets that decision.

You see MacLean has a son -- ironically now the same age as Don Sanderson -- who plays hockey. He plays hockey at the collegiate level where fighting is banned and just listening to him talk and knowing how much love he has for his son and his son's well being, you could hear the concern for the Sanderson family.

This is not to single out MacLean, it just goes that way when you are a parent. What once was just "part of the game" becomes part of real life when someone you know and love is exposed to danger, especially the very real dangers of organized hockey. Sure it's a tough game and fighting is a part of it. You can't be a part of hockey at any professional level without embracing that, but when it's your child involved, when it's your flesh and blood exposed to the dangers, especially to an unnecessary danger like fighting, well it hits home, especially when the worst-case scenario happens.

You got the same sense when you heard NHL Director of Hockey Operations Colin Campbell state, as he did last season, that maybe it is time to revisit the issue of fighting in the NHL. A statement he quickly took back, quite possibly the result of some intervention from his boss, Commissioner Gary Bettman.

You see Campbell, who never minded a good scrap as a player or a coach, seemed to have a change of heart once his son became a regular in the National Hockey League. Several, myself included, felt Campbell started a one-man crack down on hits from behind (remember those short-lived 15, 20 and 25 game suspensions he was throwing around before the general mangers and owners reeled him in?) when his son became a regular in the league.

It goes that way once the unimaginable becomes real.

And isn't that the problem that all of hockey has to face right now?

Don Sanderson could well lose his life because of a hockey fight. Up until Friday night he played in a league, the Ontario Major League, that is a refuge for overage players of some ability but with no real hopes of a career in the NHL or the other pro leagues below it. It's a league for players of some skill but who have gone on to other things. They still want to play and at a reasonably high level, but really, this is a league for players who just love to play.

It's also a league that discourages fighting, but, like all the others, acknowledges it happens. It happens because like most other amateur leagues it doesn't completely ban it. Fight in the Ontario Major League and you are ejected, but you also get to come back for the next game.

So when Sanderson, a scrappy a 6-2, 200 pounds squared off with the 6-3, 210-pound Corey Fulton no one was surprised. Sanderson, who by all accounts is the typical "good kid" off the ice had played less than a dozen games in the league, but this was already his fourth fight. For Fulton, who has only played five games, it was his third. That the two would "have a go" when Sanderson's Whitby Dunlops played Fulton's Brantford Blasts was not unexpected.

Frankly, what happened shouldn't have been unexpected either. The fight was said to be "clean" and that somewhere in the course of the action Sanderson lost his helmet. When the two went to the ice (circumstances aren't exactly clear as to how Sanderson lost his helmet) Sanderson hit his head.

The result of that --contrary to the old saw that says no one ever gets hurt in a hockey fight- have brought the unimaginable into the Sandersons' lives with very real consequences.

Sanderson could die. He might survive but be paralyzed as initial reports are that he's only had some brief movement of his fingers and it's uncertain if that was a voluntary or involuntary response.

His parents are living moment to moment with the heretofore unimaginable thought that their son might not survive to see Christmas or might never come out of a coma or might not ever walk, let alone skate again.

And for what?

Is it because fighting is part of hockey and because it always has been it always should be?

Is it because people, at every level, didn't care enough about the well-being of young people to make the kinds of decisions necessary to protect them?

Is it because, commentators, some of whom make a healthy living selling hockey fight videos and telling hockey fight stories, don't want to cut into the very business that has made them rich?

Could it be because the Commissioner of the National Hockey League, the league that pretty much sets the standard for all others, has for decades given its tacit approval to fighting even though he has always known that this day was not only imaginable, but inevitable?

What do the people, especially the hockey people who have seen the players grow bigger, stronger and, quite frankly, meaner, say to the Sanderson family or even their own families when they see that fighting is up near 50 percent in the NHL this season and that players are leaving the ice with broken bones in their faces and with broken necks the results of cheap shots from behind ala Todd Bertuzzi on Steve Moore and have done nothing to stop it?

I've written this column before, too many times actually, warning that this day was coming for hockey. That the Sanderson incident happened outside the NHL doesn't change its meaning, it merely serves as yet another warning.

The unimaginable is happening before our eyes.

No doubt you can see it on the face of the comatose Don Sanderson and on the faces of his parents, family and friends.

Truth be told I swear I heard it in the voice of Doug MacLean and, for awhile at least in the voice of Colin Campbell and a great many other intelligent hockey men who can perhaps, in their most private moments, could see the faces of their own children in the face of Don Sanderson. See their own agony in the faces of Sanderson's parents.

Is it a tragedy? Certainly. Was it unimaginable? Hardly.

Hockey, at every level, desperately needs to recognize the difference.