"All I can say is that I've never received a private apology and… uh… you know… I don't dwell on that."
"Do you want one?"
"No. I mean. Something at this point, I mean, I don't dwell on that, I don't think about it. I think… people's actions…. I try not to judge people either. But I think people's actions tend to give an indication of things. I think the actions speak for themselves."
"What are the chances, Steve, that you could forgive him?"
"That's one I’m not going to touch."
-- Steve Moore with the CBC's Tom Harrington on The National last night on the eve of the third anniversary of Todd Bertuzzi's criminal assault on the former NHL forward
The more this drags out, the harder it is to figure out which camp is right. On the one hand are the old-time hockey dinosaurs who always fall back on the "there is no place for the law on the ice" stance -- which is patently absurd -- and will tell you to "find another sport" if you object to on-ice violence.
On the other, does even Steve Moore really believe there could ever be totally clean hockey at an elite level in North America? There are other hockey cultures that have realized this, such as U.S. high school and college... women's hockey... pretty much all of Europe, really. In Canada, and by extension the NHL, it's a little different.
There's a worldview that grows up around every sporting culture. Hockey's roots in Canada took form around the late 19th/early 20th century, a violent era in Canada rife with with racial tensions between the English and French, the Riel Rebellion, participation in the Boer War. It became understood that while hockey offered unmatched grace, it was also a proving ground to demonstrate what was called muscular Christianity and no one, but no one, was going to cheer for pious wimps (although you might get the Lady Byng at the end of the year). It's always been there, that belief hockey needs that an outlet where for people go all crazy and violent and afterward have everyone shrug it off as "all part of the game."
It's complete bumpf, but it's part of Canada's defining mythology, like it or not. At the same time, it's obvious what the NHL's "addiction to violence" (as Damien Cox puts it) has wrought. At this time of the year when a lot of minor hockey and junior teams are in playoffs and emotions are running high, you can't go a week without reading about about a ref being assaulted or a team that was about to be eliminated starting a brawl in hope of getting the other team's players' suspended for the next series. Behaviour learned is behaviour repeated, and where do you think people got the idea that was any way to act?
At the same time, to most Canadians the idea of hockey without that element is almost unimaginable, sad to say, and it's hard to see that ever changing.
Related: 10 Hockey Violence Lowlights (CBC.ca)
That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.
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2 comments:
The Moore/Bertuzzi situation was overblown because of the injury, not because of the act. Not to say that it wasn't a bad thing for the game, but worse acts (Chris Simon last week) are often overlooked because the other guy is not injured. While each act is a big deal in Canada, most other places don't notice unless its an easy thing to blow up. All sports have violence at some point, hockey rightly allows fighting, but outright violent acts are rarely tolerated. As a football/hockey fan, I think there are far more cheap shots in football (Albert Haynesworth this season), showing that all sports have some violence, and its the players, not the game that are at fault. Please, no more Moore/Bertuzzi talk, its been years.
It's still before the courts, similar incidents are still happening and the NHL has made no move to get that thuggery out of the game. So it's still a story, friend.
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