Throwing Punches @ Legal Hits

How did the clean body check became a dirty word?

It’s the late 1980’s. Most Saturday nights the French CBC was the only place for a Toronto kid to watch a Habs game. Larry Robinson was still prowling the Forum ice, although his orange-tiger-fro was now contained in a blue helmet.

An unsuspecting or naive forward from the opposing team rushed over centre ice into the Habs end and tried to squeeze over the Canadiens blue line along the boards. Robinson, moving in what seemed like slow motion, laid a decisive, clean hip check. Bone crushing would be kind. It sounded like someone throwing a bowling ball against a garage door.

The opposing player lay still on the ice. After initially half cheering, half moaning the home town fans at the Forum fell silent. Out of respect for the injured player, but mostly out of respect for Larry Robinson. The announcers proclaimed the hit as a master work of body checking. The kind of clean hit that Robinson was famous for and still, in his veteran years capable of, if an opposing player was not careful.

Robinson stood quietly, calmly waiting, indignant. The other team looked on respectfully in support of their injured teammate, but also reflecting on what they had seen. A good hit. A clean check. It was a well-deserved learning moment. Watch out kid. You’ll know better next time. Keep your head up. Know your place on the ice when Big Bird was out there. It’s a rough game.

The player was helped off the ice, the Forum fans politely clapped, slightly still in awe of what they had seen and heard. The game began again.

At some point in the NHL over the past few years, a legal body check became a reason for a fight.

Sports is full of codes. Most are elements of camaraderie. Others are passive power trips. Some are steeped in tradition from years of game play. At worst, some codes are creepy, unspoken and devastating. Sports has spent the past 20 years trying to weed the worst of them out of dressing rooms in the best interest of minors. The stories are hard to hear but the truth has to break through the silence that codes can create.

Unfortunately, once athletes are adults and professional their influence becomes symbolic, an action. New codes appear and usually without explanation, other than ‘that’s the code now.’ It just is. The speed of influence is impressive, if not disturbing.

At some point in the NHL over the past few years, a legal body check became a reason for a fight. Sticking up for your teammates is the reasoning. For those who watch CHL hockey, the mirroring was almost instantaneous. Perhaps HNIC still carries sway with the kids. Maybe the hockey world is still small enough that it only took one witness for the new code to spread to dressing rooms across Canada.

Anyway you slice it, you can’t watch a hockey game anymore without a big time, legal hit leading to a fight. Even the pundit class chirps along, taking cues from sports reporters who in the post game demand, god forbid, to know why a teammate didn’t ‘stick up’ for another after a clean hit. It’s like a head cold. You can try and pin the spread on someone but no one really knows. Suddenly everyone has the new code cold.

People who watch sports should try and play sports at least once a year. After a certain age just falling down becomes a serious danger. Athletes fall down and get back up all the time. They run into each other, often at incredible speeds, sometime intentionally. Any sport that includes multiple players in a ‘field of play’ has the potential for incidental and violent contact.

A number of sports include body contact as part of the game. Almost all of the major pro sports are what could be called, ‘flat footed.’ Feet on the ground. Hockey is on skates, on ice, at immense speed, with boards, sticks and bone splitting, teeth shattering pucks. Getting out of the way is a big part of hockey. A very, very important skill. If you don’t have respect for hockey players for just stepping on the ice and competing in a naturally violent sport, you might want to try involuntarily falling down on the ice and and see how you feel in the morning. Most know-it-all sports dads can’t even make it through the father-son game without a trip to the emergency room.

When the NHL almost lost Sidney Crosby to concussion, forever, it was a universal wake up call. Since then, after lawsuits and suppressed evidence came to light in all contact sports, every league developed concussion protocols. Steps were taken to reduce hits to the head. The NHL did too, except for the lapsed code ethics of fighting.

Without irony - in the NHL a fist to the face is different than an elbow to the head. Who wants to have the fighting in hockey discussion again? No one. Why, because there is no good reason for it except suggestions that players will act irresponsibly in revenge for code violations. Every sport has a form of fighting, when tempers boil over and fists fly. In those moments of intensity and competition the conflict is authentic, even justifiable. Basketball always seems the scariest. Those are some big dudes out there.

In NHL hockey, the inherent violence of the game and the general acceptance of fighting are not enough somehow. New reasons need to be created for everyone to fight and to steal the spotlight away from the talent and beauty of the game?

It’s probably stupid to consider ways to reduce ‘pointless’ fighting, even if it was something as simple as a 3 game suspension, similar to collegiate hockey. Fights would still happen, it would just have to be worth it. The worst part of the new legal hit/pick a fight code, is that it reduces respect for one of the most important parts of what makes hockey, hockey. The clean check. Skate with your head up hot shot. Learn how to get out of the way. The suicide pass.

A great body check is an elemental tradition in hockey. You see it coming, the crowd roars. Knowing how to avoid contact in the chaos that is ten skaters flying around in a ring of 4 foot boards and glass, a bare minimum. If you can’t do it you can’t play. You’ll get dropped, literally. These days respect for the beauty of a bone crushing body check is lost in the sad dance of an unneeded fight.

Once again the code turns talent into thoughtlessness.