A low-down, dirty shame

Sporting News, The, May 13, 2002 by Brian A. Shactman

When terms such as mutual respect, ethical code and honor are used in the context of hockey, the casual fan usually laughs sarcastically, while "hockey people" shake their heads, knowing that most just don't get it.

The unwritten rules: Don't mess with the goalie. Don't keep punching when the guy you're fighting goes down. Fighters don't go after non-fighters. And so on.

However, it's increasingly more difficult to respect hockey and take the code's existence seriously--if the code still exists.

"In the last five or six years, there's no more respect," says Joe Yannetti, the Blackhawks' director of professional scouting. "They just run each other. Maybe it's the equipment. They think they're invulnerable. But they're not. There is less honor than there used to be."

There's that word again--honor.

With all the egregious violence in this postseason, sports fans scoff at any coupling of hockey and honor--what with clothesline hits, blown-out knees and unconscious All-Stars.

It's past the time to argue about the relative foul play in each of the early signature hits this spring--the Leafs' Darcy Tucker on the Islanders' Michael Peca; the Leafs' Gary Roberts on the Islanders' Kenny Jonsson; the Bruins' Kyle McLaren on the Canadiens' Richard Zednik. But it's prime time for the discussion of how to change the perception that the NHL postseason is sports' version of legalized assault and battery--the closest thing to sanctioned violence in the legitimate sporting society.

How about starting with penalizing players who seemingly injure key players on purpose?

"You hit the best players but not in the context of hitting him and hurting him," Sharks G.M. Dean Lombardi says. "What McLaren did was not premeditated. Even though the Tucker hit wasn't an illegal check, it was awfully close. If you make that a penalty, it's a different story. Maybe it should be made a penalty."

Lombardi stopped short of saying a penalized player should be held out as long as the injured player cannot play. But he added that, over the long term, the team that loses star players loses in the playoffs.

"Over the short term, the other team might let down and think they have it," Lombardi says. "All of a sudden that threshold of anxiety lets up. Second, you can rally the team around (losing the star player), saying, `Hey, we can get this done with other players," and get them up for increased roles.

"But over the long haul, it goes back to a leveling factor, and one team is without its key player."

Yannetti says the league office should take a page from the NFL'S rulebook.

"It's real simple. In the NFL: If you do a crack-back block, you're out," Yannetti says. "Why can't the NHL just say no hip checks to the knee or you're out? The Toronto-Islanders series was cheap shot after cheap shot. The league has to do something. With the hit on Peca, (Tucker) was just going for his knees. That was a devastating hit."

Devastating because it knocked Peca out for six months--and effectively knocked the Islanders out of the playoffs. With Peca and Jonsson in the lineup, Game 7 of that series might have been a different story.

Most veterans admit the level of player on-player respect has diminished. However, it's not necessarily considered a leaguewide problem.

"I was watching some of the Toronto-Islanders series, and that was a little more wild than our series (against the Coyotes), which was physical but not really dirty," San Jose forward Scott Thornton says. "Some of the guys in our locker room talked about the East and how a lot of it seemed like a lack of respect. I can't say that there aren't grudges (across the league) and that people don't keep things in the back of their minds. But I go out every shift and try to finish my checks. If people get hurt while being hit by clean checks...."

Thornton thinks consistency in suspensions and penalties is the most important change that needs to be made.

"When we go out there, the adrenaline is racing, and sometimes we're like caged tigers out there. That's what makes the playoffs great," Thornton says. "All players are asking for is some consistency. Some guys seem to get more than others for the same incident. You don't want to take away from the intensity of the playoffs, but there does seem to be a lack of respect.

"If there were strict decisions that were cut and dried, players maybe would tone it down."

Now there's an interesting idea. Let's just hope disciplinarian Colin Campbell and commissioner Gary Bettman read this.

Drop by www.sportingnews.com/ nhl/playoffs/to check-out the latest second-round action in the chase for the Stanley Cup.

HAT TRICK

1 Long, long ago. Think the Leafs-Senators' Game 2 was a marathon? Its 44:30 of overtime was a romp compared with the record of 116:30, set in a 1936 Red Wings-Maroons game. Both took six hours--the miracle of TV timeouts.

2 Tentacles. Dominik Hasek went from calamari to octopus as the Red Wings, squeezed the life out of their opponents. Nature isn't supposed to work that way, but bodies aren't supposed to work like Hasek's.