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Cheap shots (off the ice) |
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Thirty-nine years ago this week (March 7), one of the ugliest incidents in modern hockey history happened at Maple Leaf Gardens, when the Flyers Larry Zeidel and the Bruins Eddie Shack engaged in a bloody stick fight precipitated by an unidentified member of the Bruins making a Holocaust-inspired anti-Semitic slur to Zeidel, who went right after his longtime rival Shack.
Thank goodness there was no such thing as cable TV back in those days to endlessly replay and dissect the incident. There were no self-righteous talking heads who only come out of the woodwork to condemn and take verbal cheapshots at the sport of hockey as a whole.
We're now going to have to endure another round of this after last night's Chris Simon-Ryan Hollweg incident, just as we saw after the McSorley-Brashear and Bertuzzi-Moore incidents. All the sudden, it's as if if you've never seen a pitcher throw behind a batter's head, a vicious and deliberate helmet-first hit in football, or a flagrant cheap shot in basketball.
Watching the morning sports news today, I heard a commentator say, "Hockey is the one team sport where the players brandish a weapon." Really? No player has ever brandished a baseball bat as a weapon? Seems to me there's a guy (Juan Marichal) inducted into his sport's Hall of Fame who did exactly that.
Look, no one condones what Chris Simon did last night. He deserves whatever suspension he gets from the NHL, because it was dangerous and stupid. I also don't think it's appropriate to speculate whether Hollweg (notorious for checks from behind, although he didn't board Simon so much as catch him from the side) was "acting" after the fact. I've heard that from some fans who dislike Hollweg and/or the Rangers. Oh yeah? You try getting chopped up high with a hockey stick and see how fast you bounce back to your feet. Besides, regardless of the outcome, Simon's stick swing was done with bad intentions. He should have just dropped the gloves.
But I will say this for Simon. Based on what I know about him from former teammates of his, he will take his punishment like a man and understands he should have to answer for it the next time he plays the Rangers. What he did last night was out of character, from everything I've seen during his career.
It doesn't make you a "barbarian" to point something like that in the aftermath of an incident. It simply provides a little balance to the discourse on something we all wish hadn't happened.
It's going to be a pretty boring weekend of TV viewing and reading of non-hockey columnists tsk-tsking the sport. I kind of wish they'd just go back to their regular routine of ignoring the many great things about hockey.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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