My Post Mortem on the Long Island Brawl

I’ve spent the last week trying, and for the most part failing, to get over my anger about what happened on Long Island a week ago Friday.

The entire spectacle was an embarrassment to the National Hockey League, not that the league is intelligent enough to understand that. My position on this incident has not changed over eight days, it’s just been clarified. What happened was a 60 minute premeditated and cowardly assault with intent to injure. It was based not on some noble if misplaced desire to protect the Islanders’ top players; rather on some flimsy vendetta that the Islanders conjured out of mid air. It was, to paraphrase Mario Lemieux, a travesty of sport. A travesty made worse by the NHL’s impotent reaction 24 hours later.

If you think I’m overreacting to all this ask yourself two questions. What would have been the reaction if Matt Martin had landed his cowardly sucker punch from behind and fractured Max Talbot’s jaw or even broken his neck as Todd Bertuzzi did to Steve Moore. And how will you feel if Eric Tangradi is unable to play for a year or more because of his second concussion.

The NHL is doing what it always does, punish the result rather than the action. That would be bad enough if the punishments were proportionate to the crime which they rarely are. It’s a sad truth that if Talbot suffered a career ending injury, Martin likely would have received a 25 to 40 game ban. That would have been woefully inadequate given Martin’s action but certainly more than he got.

Instead the NHL’s lack of action will simply encourage and enable more of this behavior. Consider that the Pens/Islanders game was the third brawl filled game in ten days and little action was taken on the first two. Consider some unknown Colorado hack took a cheap run at Olli Jokinen the next night after he put up four points on the fading Avalanche. It’s a systematic and endemic problem that the NHL does not acknowledge, let alone attempt to fix.

For too long the league has relied on its archaic code of justice to mediate justice. Besides the obvious flaw in having the inmates run the asylum, the simple fact is its not working anymore. Players seem to be losing respect for the so called “code”. What the Islanders did Friday night was a three hour case study in this. As former Penguin Rick Tocchet said last week, players seem more willing to hurt each other today. And Tocchet knows a thing or two about hockey fights.

I might excuse the Islander’s conduct on some level if any member of their organization, player or coach had acknowledged in the slightest that things got out of hand. They steadfastly refused to do so. Instead, they bragged about protecting their players, sending a message and in the most asinine comment I’ve heard this season showing restraint. I guess my memory is foggy. I’m sure I remember Garth Snow wearing a mask when he played goal for the Pens yet he seems like he took one too many slap shots to the cranium.

The NHL should have come out and sent a strong message that this behavior will not be tolerated. When you use the term “DELIBERATE ATTEMPT TO INJURE” in doling out punishment, you are saying that the player committed a crime against the game. They should have suspended both Martin and Trevor Gillies for the remainder of the season for their assaults on Talbot and Tangradi. They should have suspended Jack Capuano five games for complete failure to control his players. They should have suspended Matt Hailey for spending the entire night starting brawls. And yes, Dan Bylsma should have been suspended as required by rule for Eric Godard leaving the bench.

Instead they suspended only three players. Two of the suspensions, for Gillies and Martin, were frighteningly inadequate to the crime. And the Godard suspension, which I agree with, was only by rule and would not have been necessary if the officials had put a stop to the insanity in the second period. None of the other brawlers were suspended.

The obvious message here…fighting is acceptable no matter how badly it gets out of hand. And if you go as far over the line as Gillies and Martin did, the league will talk tough and then give them a slap on the wrist suspension. Compare that to the NBA, hardly a bastion of purity or responsibility which suspended players involved in the Indiana/Detroit brawl for the remainder of the season, about 60 games and the playoffs.

The NBA’s message to its players, that kind of brawling will not be tolerated. The NHL’s message, as long as you don’t cheap shot a guy in the head, you’ll be back the next night. And even if you do, you’ll only sit a few days. Somehow I don’t see that as quite the detriment that the all knowing former goon Colin Campbell does.

Those who continue to profess that the players police themselves will call this an isolated incident. I say that this incident proved how ineffective and counter productive that idea is. The NHL claims that fighting protects the game. I take the opposite view point, I think fighting enables the kind of ugly incident we saw last Friday night. As I said last week, if you believe fighting is necessary to police the game I ask you this…did it work last Friday? Keep in mind that before he tried to end Tangradi’s career for no apparent reason, Gillies fought Eric Godard.

I personally would not mind if they eliminated fighting from the game. Unfortunately, the only way that’s going to happen is if somebody dies on the ice during a fight. I truly believe that. And as much as I would prefer hockey to be fight free, I’m not willing to pay the price of a human life to get there. So I would suggest that the league add a mandatory ten minute misconduct on top of every fight. If fighting is that necessary to police the game then a player should be wiling to pay a 15 minute price. And for those who believe it necessary, I remind you that it all but disappears when the playoffs start.

What is worse is what has happened since. Mario Lemieux, arguably the greatest player in NHL history rightfully called out what happened as a travesty of sport. He criticized both the events itself and the NHL’s pathetic response. His message was right on point and had to be delivered. As a fan, I would want my owner to do exactly that.

Not only was his message ignored, it was summarily dismissed by the NHL and Lemieux was ripped for it by fans and media alike. I found it fascinating that in all the talk of Lemieux being a hypocrite because of the sinful act of employing Matt Cooke, not one person actually contradicted his point. To me that is even more convincing evidence that he was 100% correct.

That said, the universal effort to shoot the messenger was telling. It tells me that there are too many people in the NHL that are more concerned with protecting its archaic code of brutal violence than doing what’s best for the sport. Even as the game’s best player and poster child sits on the sideline with a concussion induced by an unpunished cheap shot to the head, the NHL continues to ignore an obvious problem.

Lemieux has been ripped for not calling out Cooke for his shots on Marc Savard and Fedor Tyutin. The implication is that Lemieux supports Cooke’s actions. Beyond the fact that Lemieux and the Pens never once complained about Cooke’s suspension this argument is blatantly stupid. Ask Andrew Ference what happens when you call out a teammate. Do you think free agents would be lining up to come to Pittsburgh if Mario was calling out his own players?

And for the record, I think the NHL should have suspended Cooke for the hit on Savard and more for the hit on Tyutin. It’s all part of an overall trend of the league not taking these issues seriously enough. And each time that happens, the repercussions are worse. Sadly the NHL just does not get this.

Instead they let a career goon like Campbell dole out obviously inadequate punishments. They continue to rally around small minding thinking and an archaic and useless code. They continue to cheapen their product through unnecessary fights that lead to brawls and worse. They continue to make their stars take a back seat to fourth line goons.

As a lifetime hockey fan, I am grudgingly able to look beyond this. Far too many are not. Hockey is one of the greatest games on earth. Sadly, the NHL is hell bent on making sure many people never find out. We learned that the hard way last weekend.