NHL: National Hypocrisy League

Hypocrites are everywhere in sports today.
The Major League Baseball Player’s Association claims to protect the interests of its members, yet refuses to authorize drug testing.
Terrell Owens complained on ESPN last October about how he didn’t like playing in San Francisco because he wanted to play for a team that had a chance to win. Last week Owens got his wish and was traded to the defending AFC North champion Baltimore Ravens, but now says he won’t suit up for the team.
The NCAA claims that a Division I-A football playoff isn’t feasible because the “student athletes” involved would miss too much school. Yet the NCAA sanctions playoffs in each of its lower divisions.
The list goes on, from college coaches who promise they’ll stay at one school for their entire career but jump to a better position in a heartbeat, to players who say they want to win a championship but instead sign with the highest bidder.
But the most hypocrisy in sports comes from the NHL. And the league is currently proving this point quite well.
For years the suits in the NHL executive offices have publicly decried the amount of fighting in the sport. But behind the scenes the league has done nothing about it, mainly because they know fighting helps sell their product.
Two nights ago the product of the NHL’s duplicitous stance on fighting was in full display when Todd Bertuzzi of the Vancouver Canucks sucker-punched Colorado Avalanche forward Steve Moore in the back of the head. Bertuzzi then tackled Moore, who went headfirst into the ice. Moore was taken off the ice on a stretcher and is now out for the year with a concussion and fractured neck, while Bertuzzi faces a long suspension.
Critics will slam Bertuzzi for his dirty hit, but in reality he is just the latest in a long line of scapegoats that get the blame because of the NHL’s acceptance of fighting.
On the record the league is against fighting and says it ruins the integrity of the game. Every now and then things like the "Instigator Rule" are put in to make it appear like the league is toughening up on fighting, but these rules are about as intimidating as jaywalking laws.
Off the record fighting is embraced and used to promote the “toughness” of the league.
Believe this; if the NHL really wanted to put a halt to fighting during games, they could. Remember the Knicks-Heat rivalry in the middle of the 90’s? It seemed that every time the two NBA teams played there was a bench-clearing brawl. David Stern said he wanted the fighting stopped, so the NBA made a rule that said if a player came off the bench to join in a brawl, they would earn an automatic suspension. When’s the last time you saw a big fight in the NBA?
Yes, the Bertuzzi-Moore situation wasn’t technically a fight. But it was the product of the NHL system that essentially encourages retaliation for hard checks and cheap shots.
Moore’s injury never would have occurred if there were rules in place designed to actually stop fighting instead of the hollow rules that pretend to do so.
Bertuzzi hit Moore as retaliation for a hit Moore put on Vancouver captain Marcus Naslund three weeks ago. That hit left Naslund with a concussion and out for three games. The NHL didn’t discipline Moore for that hit, so the Canuck players felt they needed to.
Now the league is now stuck in a position of having to bite the hand that feeds them. They will say all the right things at today’s news conference about how fighting is wrong. Bertuzzi will likely be suspended for over 20 games and the league brass will say that fighting has no place in their game. But in a week this incident will be forgotten and the league will continue its policy of looking the other way on brawling.
Let’s put it this way: There is as much chance of the NHL making a concerted effort to stop fighting as there is of O.J. finding the real killers.
The television ratings for hockey are so low that games on ESPN routinely have less viewers than infomercials and bowling. Seriously. If the NHL put a stop to the brawling not even the UPN would want to show their games.
I’m not taking a stance on fighting in the NHL. I’m just making the point that the league should be far from surprised that this situation happened. It’s only a matter of time before somebody gets seriously hurt or even killed on the ice. If Moore had landed in a slightly different way, he could have easily been paralyzed. Luckily he is supposed to make a full recovery.
That is good for the NHL.
Now the league can continue to allow fighting even while criticizing its place in their game.
In his post-game press conference Monday Colorado Avalanche coach Tony Granato said about the incident, "it doesn't matter what the score was, what the time was, what the place was, what the history was, there's no room in our game for that."
This is the same Tony Granato that was suspended 15 games in 1994 for a brutal and intentional slash delivered to Neil Wilkinson.
I guess the hypocrites in the NHL aren’t just in the league offices.