I am the first person to tell you I’m not an avid hockey fan.
More than 50% of the teams in the NHL make the playoffs (a gripe for another post) so I don’t pay attention until the postseason, because my local team, the Boston Bruins, have done well in the past few years. I enjoy the sport of hockey, just not NHL regular season. (I love attending and following collegiate games on ice, so I feel as if I know enough about the sport to establish a semblance of ethos.)
So for regular-season hockey to catch my attention, something must be important.
And it is.
Vancouver Canucks Coach John Tortorella received a 15-day (6-game) suspension Tuesday for his part in a massive altercation between his club and the Calgary Flames, played last Saturday. The penalty was a result mainly of Tortorella’s attempt to enter the Calgary locker room after the first period, which was caught by cameras.
The incident began when Calgary Coach Bob Hartley submitted his lineup with his rugged fourth-liners penciled for starting. Tortorella, sensing what Hartley was up to, went tit-for-tat, playing his rugged line. Essentially, two Defenseman faced-off for the opening puck drop and you can guess what happened from there.
BOOM! 142 penalty minutes in the first two seconds of a hockey game, WOW! Needless to say, there was more real fighting in that two seconds than there is at a 90-minute WWE wrestling event.
Furthermore, I embrace fighting in the NHL and even wrote an article about it in my own blog, here. Anyway, I think the fighting aspect of hockey is fantastic. It’s the retaliatory brush back pitch in baseball, the extra-physical body on a rebound for basketball, it ensures that the players police themselves. Players self-regulation is key to the NHL because it avoids cheap-shots that make names like Sean Avery famous. Fighting stops a vengeful check into the boards, or a slash with the stick, or any other unnecessarily bodily harm done by a skate or stick for an offense committed seasons ago.
A few seasons ago is what seemed to cause this brawl, as Hartley and Totorella have a history of dislike longer – and more extensive than – criminals and police officers.
And criminal is exactly how the suspension felt when it was handed down to Tortorella. 15 days/6 games? Really? Now Hartley did not get off Scot-tape-free, but he only incurred a $25,000 penalty. He can talk to his team for the next week. As Tortorella only set his lineup as such AFTER seeing Hartley’s – how is this fair? Okay, Torty, I see where they’re coming from in suspending you for trying to break up the block party which is the first intermission in the Calgary locker room, but at the same time: really? If Tortorella leaves his best guys out there (the Sedin brothers), then they get clobbered. He puts the players – and therefore the organization – at risk if he leaves his stars out there with Kimbo Slices skating around, nary a skilled stick, but deft fists flying. Wait, you’re saying Tortorella protected the organization who employs him rather than let his stars get beat to a pulp? Unbelievable. The nerve.
In a USA Today article, NHL senior executive vice president of hockey operations Colin Campbell said, “Mr. Tortorella’s actions in attempting to enter the Calgary Flames locker room after the first period were both dangerous and an embarrassment to the League.”
An embarrassment to the League?! (First off, Calgary – at 16-27, good for 13th out of 14 teams in the Western Conference – is an embarrassment.) The league has quite the bit of intestinal fortitude to say that, because the last time I checked, they were stressing player safety and trying to avoid concussions. (Thanks, NFL.) And so they’re telling me that the Calgary Flames sticking Mr. Goon Squad Fisticuffs on the ice presents less of a threat for things they supposedly desire to eliminate than a coach trying to push through heavily padded bodies to get to a locker room? I’m not condoning what Tortorella did, but c’mon, one incident was more dangerous than the other. Think logically. Oh man. If Tortorella doesn’t stick his fighters on the ice, that’s what would’ve happened! Defenseless skill guys would get pummeled and get hurt!
Gary Bettman has seen three work stoppages in his tenure, but this gross misappropriation of fines goes beyond normal levels for him. To say in an extensive review of the evidence that Hartley’s actions vastly underwhelmed what Tortorella did is pointedly untrue. This far more of an an embarrassment for NHL brass than it is for Coach John Tortorella. At least his actions are understandable, if not reasonable.
Sam Fortier is a contributor to Sports Compass, but is more well-known as an Alex Flum antagonist. This upcoming summer he will intern at WEEI (Boston, MA) for the Dennis and Callahan Show. He doesn’t know how to feel about the recent Sox decision to sign Grady Sizemore, but is sure that he loves warning tracks.
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