Hockey Hall of Shame

Columnist Phil Burpee at the
Pincher Creek High School Rodeo
Chris Davis photo

Phil Burpee, Columnist

There's a nip in  the air, and I think maybe some young men will be turning their thoughts towards carving that beautiful curve across the blue line, deaking out the last defenseman, and firing a blistering shot up into the top right hand corner of the net a millisecond before the goalie's glove arrives. And why not? Hockey's as good a game as there is on this planet  -  fast, ruthless, challenging, and filled with crowd-pleasing tumult. Team sports have always served as a replacement for war, and what a fine idea. The Greeks figured out a long time ago that celebrating the skills of warfare  -  speed, strength, accuracy, co-ordination, tactics, camaraderie, the will to victory, and an indefatigable spirit  -  served very well to vent off some of the martial urgencies of their society. Through a mutually agreed upon formality of location, rules and conformity of procedure, differing societies and nations could satisfy some of their innate frictions through the formalized combat of sport. The grandest manifestation of that today is the World Cup of Football (soccer). But hockey works pretty good for us in Canada. Across the frozen pond, uncounted young warriors have cast their steely gazes. And the clack and scratch of blade and stick on ice is better by far than the fife and drum.


But something's got twisted in the whole deal. Some lizards have got a hold of the game. Some dull-eyed, robot moneymen have wormed their way into the governing apparatus of this fine sport and subverted the genetic makeup of it like a virus does to a physical body. This past week we see yet another young man vanished from this life by his own hand. Wade Belak, a big-jawed tough guy, slings a rope over the rafter and checks out. Blame is apportioned every which way  -  lack of mental health surveillance in the League, too much pressure to perform, too heavy a schedule, or CTE, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a condition of irreversible cerebral degeneration brought about by too many concussions. In the NFL now increasing numbers of former players are bequeathing their brains to neurological research institutes  -  which says something about the state of that game and its expectations.  Or maybe none of the above are to blame  -  just a bummed-out guy falling to his own personal demons.

There is blame to be apportioned though. And I think it pools at the top, where the big-boys set the tone. Those well-fed gentlemen you sometimes see high-fiveing up in the corporate boxes in NHL arenas are no mere bystanders. They ultimately determine what level of leniency is to be afforded cheap headshots, or career-ending clips to the side of the knee. Who can forget the puke-making spectre of Todd Bertuzzi, two hundred and forty-five pounds of testosterone-addled Canuck meat, blubbing and snivelling on TV about how sorry he was to have cold-cocked Steve Moore in the back of the head and then driven his face into the ice, cracking his neck. And then later on he rearranges Blackhawk's Ryan Johnson's brains with his elbow and gets a five-minute major. OK, elbows are part of the game. Many a foolhardy young buck who thought he was tough enough went into the corner with Gordie Howe and soon learned to regret it. Gordie's elbows were hard and fast, but all he ever meant to do was break noses. The idea of having League-licensed permission to try and ruin a man's brain or career was an alien idea to the old-timers. But the level of punishment meted out for today's over-the-top headshots and crosschecks tells us that Head Office has determined that this sort of conduct is not only generally acceptable, it's actually perceived as being necessary to the success of the League.

There's heroes and there's heroes. Tim Horton, who's now known by a couple of generations as the Tim-bits man, was first and foremost a hockey man. He was a defenseman for the Toronto Maple Leafs for the bulk of his illustrious career, and over and above his highly acclaimed playing skills, he was also known as a cop for the Leafs. But he wasn't a bare-knuckled kind of a cop. He was so strong (Gordie Howe called him the strongest man in hockey) that he would simply wade into whatever melee was happening and glom on to the offender with what was known as the Horton Bear Hug until the hubbub settled down. Then he'd get back to playing the game. Even the Golden Jet stood in awe of Horton's power. Like all truly great heroes though, he went down in a blazing trail of gothic glory and mystery. Tim was known to favour big, fast cars  -  not prissy little European roadsters, but supercharged, stock monsters off the assembly line in Oshawa. Every O.P.P. Highway Patrolman in southern Ontario had nailing Tim right at the top of his wish-list. But first they had to catch him, and that wasn't going to be easy in their slug-wagon Crown Royals. So legend has it, if you accept the hushed tales told in many a bar between North Bay and Fort Erie, that one night the coppers caught wind that Tim would be travelling between Hamilton and St. Catherines along the Queen Elizabeth Freeway about 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning. The call went out. The road rose up. Forensic evidence suggests that Tim Horton was travelling at approximately 150 miles an hour (250 km/hr) when he left the pavement and connected with his fate. Police always claimed that his vehicle was not in any way obstructed or diverted  -  but suspicions ran long and grim. Either way, a hero flamed out that night  -  a gentleman and a sportsman who believed in his game and believed in hard work and fair play.

Well, maybe the turning point was somewhere around the time another sniffler showed up on TV. There was the Great One behind the microphones, soaking his Kleenex over having to bite the bullet and accept the horrible fate of having to leave Edmonchuk for a million dollar gig in LA, along with a mansion and his lovely Hollywood starlet bride Janet. Of course the villain in all this was none other than Peter Puck himself, who had got himself so far in hock with his meat-packing business that he had to make some fast cash  -  solution?  -  cash out on Gretsky. And now the wages are ten times that. And now the 'fans' are paying three hundred dollars for a jersey and season tickets require a mortgage. And now the wellbeing of the players, and of the game itself, is secondary to cashing in on the mass frenzy that has become Hockey Night in Canada. Hard-nose NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, and his embarrassing lapdog Don Cherry, that caricature patsy-man for NHL corporate greed, violence and stupidity, have transformed a vigorous, joyful tangle of controlled mayhem into a money-making machine of monstrous proportions. And along the way young men are being abandoned to their despair and confusion, or left physically and/or mentally ruined for the rest of their lives. Add to this the grim spectacle of the Calgary Flames skulking off downtown to get their H1N1 shots last year while seniors and mothers with babes were left standing in line-ups around the block in the snow waiting for theirs. A neighbour of mine, a lifelong rancher and farmer, summed it up when he saw this on the news  -  "Aren't they men?"

The things we love most get stolen from us and turned into commodities. What a shame. And if you want to get to the offices of the NHL Board of Governors these days, you've got to walk down that long, gloomy and blood-splattered Hockey Hall of Shame. Be prepared to blinker your eyes along the way. And don't forget to check your morals at the door.

On a brighter note though, I see that the PC Mustangs seriously wupped ass on Friday night. Hup-one, hup-two. Maybe we should put the money men on the scrimmage line or in goal for a turn or two. A little addling might do those lizard brains some good.

"What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
Matthew 16-26

Phil Burpee
September 4, 2011

Phil Burpee is a carpenter and farmer living north of Pincher Creek. He keeps an eye on the world from under the big Alberta sky.