By Jordan Heath-Rawlings, with Dan Robson in Ottawa
SPORTSNET MAGAZINE
There was warfare on display in an episode of can’t-miss television Sunday. Bodies were bludgeoned, blood was spilled, heavily armoured men charged one another, hacking and slashing in a frenzy to tear one another limb from limb. Even the leaders of armies met in single combat in a ferocious struggle for supremacy. And then, when the afternoon playoff games were done, a whole bunch of people probably watched HBO’s Game of Thrones, too.
In the span of eight games over two days — and a solid seven-and-a-half man hours spent in the penalty box — on the first weekend of the post-season, the NHL playoffs turned what was already a chippy start into a full-blown on-ice melee, repellent and compelling all at once; the kind of hockey that is tough to support but even tougher to turn off. Hits led to scrums, scrums led to fights, fights led to head shots and other ugly forms of retribution until you could be forgiven for ignoring the score in favour of simply waiting to see who was going to do what to whom and who scored on the ensuing power play.
Open Season: Head shots, dirty hits and suspensions have dominated the news in the first round of NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs. Join a special edition of HOCKEY CENTRAL for a discussion with our panel of experts as well as fan and player reaction. Watch and chat live on sportsnet.ca and Sportsnet, Thursday night at 11 p.m. local time. The half-hour show will feature a live chat on sportsnet.ca with HOCKEY CENTRAL analyst and Stanley Cup champion Brad May. The former NHL player will interact with fans and viewers over the biggest issues this post-season.
When the dust settled, as NHL discipline czar Brendan Shanahan attempted to regain some semblance of control by handing out suspensions like so many parting gifts from Oprah — “You get a game! And you get a fine! You get three games! Everybody gets a hearing!” — a league already in the grips of a concussion crisis was scrambling to find its footing, like a dazed player desperate to reach the safety of the bench.
Only, as Red Wings winger Johan Franzén demonstrated Sunday by spearing benched Predators pivot David Legwand in the midsection, even the bench isn’t safe anymore. And the league faces a similar problem — there’s no solid ground left for them to stand on, nowhere they can turn without sounding either defensive and sanctimonious or blatantly hypocritical.
On one large and obvious hand, beginning the playoffs with this kind of mayhem is a canary in the league’s coal mine — an indication that, almost a year after Shanahan took the job and vowed to stamp out the kind of dangerous hits that were taking out the game’s stars, there is still a separate standard for officiating in the playoffs, and there is still no substantive protection in place for the players when push really comes to shove. The highlights are ugly, the press generated by the thuggery is terrible for the game’s image and, of course, the acts themselves we now know are horribly dangerous to the long-term health of the players. The stereotype of hockey as a violent sideshow of a sport hasn’t been on display to this level in the playoffs for more than a decade. For fans who rejoiced at Shanahan’s promise to clean up the game, it was a fundamental betrayal that matters were allowed to get this far out of hand. And, suspensions aside, it’s not likely to end at the drop of a hat, or by tossing the book at the worst offenders. “I’m sure it’s going to get worse,” said Rangers centre Brad Richards after the team’s cheap shot–heavy game two tilt with the Ottawa Senators …
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