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.

A Sickening Display of “Sport”

I love hockey. So please understand how serious I take what I'm about to write.

My love for the sports parallels the Penguins’ rise to prominence, lead by a quiet (usually) French Canadian simply known as “Le Magnifique.” And yet, I clearly remember watching Michelle Dion and the Pens nearly pull one of the greatest playoff upsets in sports history against the Islander dynasty in 1982.

Those Islander teams were amongst the greatest of all time. They were blessed with a roster full of hall of fame players. They were not saints, but for the most part played the game the right way. Three decades later, their successors put on one of the most shameful displays in NHL history.

I’m not sure what was worse; the beer league goonism and thugery the Islanders perpetrated under the guise of “settling a score,” or the pathetic see no evil response from their coach and general manager. To hear Jack Capuano and Garth Snow tell it, their team of choir boys was simply defending themselves from the likes of the evil Eric Tangradi.

I guess that explains why the legendary Matt Martin felt the need to give Max Talbot the Todd Bertuzzi treatment. I guess that’s why Trevor Gillies skated half the rink to drive his elbow through Tangradi’s cranium, punch him while he was clearly injured and then taunt him while he was laying face first on the ice. So much for getting tough on head injuries.

Let me be as clear as possible on this so there is no misunderstanding where I stand on this. Gillies' actions in that sequence were possibly the most sickening display I’ve seen in over 30 years of watching sports. It was the single most disgraceful act of a game that was a complete disgrace to the sport.

Seriously, what does it say for the Islanders that Martin tried to end Talbot’s season with a cheap sucker punch from behind and it was only the second worst display of the night? And there was an ample supply of other candidates.

All of this occurred because the Islanders apparently felt the need to avenge a questionable hit by Talbot in the last meeting and Brent Johnson’s one punch TKO of Rick DiPietro. Frankly I would think the Islanders would pin a metal on Johnson for taking DiPietro out of the line-up but that’s an argument for a different day. I guess I’m struggling to understand how fighting is an accepted part of the game unless your guy loses. Then its justification to run Johnson and his teammates all night long.

The NHL was apparently incensed in word though not in deed. They admonished both players for “deliberate attempt to injure” and then gave them slap on the wrist suspensions. I’m sorry but when you acknowledge that somebody “deliberately attempted to injure an opponent,” that player’s season should be over. It goes against every principle of organized team sports to purposefully injure an opponent. Even James Harrison acknowledged that. When there are multiple acts as such over 60 minutes, the offending organization and coach should be severely punished.

Apparently the fact that Talbot was lucky enough to duck and avoid a fractured jaw makes the act less egregious, at least in the eyes of the all knowing and all powerful Colin Campbell.

I recognize that the NHL fined the Islanders $100,000 and in doing so sent a bit of a message. That said, whether the Islanders are cheap or not, that’s chump change for a professional sports franchise. What absolutely should have happened is additional fines and a suspension for Islanders coach Jack Capuano who at best turned a blind eye to his team’s obvious intentions, at worse encouraged it.

I commented after the game were that anything less than 20 game suspensions for both Martin and Gilles would leave me outraged. Well guess what…I’m outraged. If I thought my voice carried any weight, I would publicly admonish the league for this tragic miscarriage of sports justice. Thankfully, Mario Lemieux took care of it for me.

Let’s take a step back though. Any non Pittsburgh fan who reads this is going to interpret it as a one sided rant by an angry Penguin fan. I do not deny my anger; my impression is that the Islanders caused most of this; but there is a bigger issue here. In short, what happened Friday night was inevitable.

I’ve never hidden the fact that I’m not a fan of fighting in the NHL. I believe it’s unnecessary and that it cheapens and demeans what is otherwise a great sport. It’s amazing to me that something deemed so necessary all but disappears in the playoffs. It’s even more amazing that people feel that two 4th line goons fighting has more effect on the game than Brooks Orpik crushing a guy with a clean, legal check. The only thing I hate worse than fighting is the pathetic attempts to justify it as a necessary act of “policing the game.”

Did the Islanders look like they were “policing the game” on Friday night?

That said, I have reluctantly accepted fighting for years as part of the game’s culture. I grudgingly gave the league credit for eliminating bench clearing brawls and for gradually siphoning fighting from the game. If fighting was limited to the occasional Eric Godard versus Colton Orr scrap to fire up the crowd, I could live with it. If it was occasionally used to avenge say Adam Grave’s criminal slash on Lemieux in 1992 or Matt Cooke’s hit on Marc Savard last year, I could deal with it.

After seeing three brawl filled games this week, and the NHL’s meager response I fear that’s no longer the case. It’s even worse that the league tries to depict its response as aggressive. The impotent punishments from the league in response to Friday night’s horrific actions are nothing less than a tacit endorsement of what went on. For all of Campbell’s tough talk, only three players left the arena with anything more than additional PIMs.

If the NHL wants to protect fighting’s limited role in the game, I guess that’s their right. If the players truly believe that a limited amount of fighting is necessary, I can continue to accept it in extreme moderation. That said, the travesty of sport that occurred Friday night on Long Island can not be allowed under any circumstances. It is indefensible on any level for a civilized sport. It’s the latest example of a league that continually sabotages any chance for mainstream acceptance.

The movie Slapshot was supposed to be a parody of a bygone era or minor league hockey. It was not supposed to be replayed in earnest by “supposed” NHL players.

The Penguins are not innocent bystanders in this. It does not help their cause that they lead the league in fighting majors. Nor does it help them that Matt Cooke is forcefully growing his reputation as one of the dirtiest players in the game. That does not excuse what went on Friday night in Long Island but it’s clear that the Pens are earning an ugly reputation around the NHL.

A year ago I praised the Pens for becoming a genuinely tough and physical team to play against. This year they seem to be morphing in to their neighbors to the east.

That said, this is bigger than the Penguins and bigger than what happened on Friday night. The simple act of allowing fighting in the sport opens up the doors to that kind of breakdown. The refusal of the league to take truly aggressive action against such an embarrassing display emboldens every other franchise. What’s to stop any other team from bringing up a few minor league hacks to rough up any player who dares throw a body check? I realize the Islanders are not a playoff team (or an NHL team in my opinion) but do you really think losing Matt Martin for four games is going to affect them?

Again, I love hockey and I was thoroughly disgusted by what happened Friday night. The game had the same effect on me that it had on Lemieux; it made me question whether I want to continue to be a part of the sport I love. The NHL remains a niche sport in the United States. When it starts offending its most die hard fans, it’s in serious trouble. The league can not continue to let a minority of backward minded Canadians determine its destiny. It must stop catering to the barbaric Don Cherry and Mike Milbury mentality, or risk destroying itself.

What happened Friday night was a sickening and disgraceful display. Kris Letang and Dan Bylsma said it was not hockey, I saw it was not even sport. It served only to embarrass the National Hockey League and the teams involved, regardless of who was ultimately at fault.
The league had to send a strong message that this was unacceptable on any level. As Lemieux clearly stated today, they failed.