Marty McSorley on Donald Brashear. Tie Domi on Scott Niedermayer. Wayne Maki on Ted Green. Todd Bertuzzi on Steve Moore.
We know these names, these sad litanies. Yet we don't know. We forget, are lulled, and then we ask ourselves: How did hockey come to this place? How did the game come to be this way?
Truth is, now more, now less, it has always been this way. And maybe, just maybe, that's why we like it. Maybe we like a little blood with our beer and our popcorn and our "He shoots! He scores!"
Here's a pairing most of us have forgotten. Loney on Laurin. The year was 1905. It was the year of the first known homicide in hockey. (By the way, CBC Radio's Dave Seglins has produced an excellent documentary on the case.) In Maxville, Ont., 19-year-old Allan Loney was playing the final game of the season against the 24-year-old Alcide Laurin and his team from Alexandria. Small-town rivals.
This is what I would learn as I researched my book on violence in hockey. That the game is, and always has been, a tribal game. The first competitive games were played between French and English, Catholics versus Protestants, miners against loggers. Sometimes it was just for bragging rights, but bragging rights were, and remain, a big deal when the game being played is hockey. Al Purdy once called Canadian hockey a blend of ballet and murder. He was so right.
In that game in 1905, it was perhaps significant that Alcide Laurin was French and Catholic and that Allan Loney was English and Protestant. In the game, Mr. Laurin broke Mr. Loney's nose in front of the net during a scuffle and Mr. Loney responded with a stick to the head. Mr. Laurin went down and did not rise. He was dead. And Allan Loney was charged with murder.
"Not only," said the lawyer for the Crown at the time, "is the prisoner at the bar on trial. But the game of hockey itself is on trial."
The jury debated four hours and had he been found guilty, Mr. Loney would have been hanged. Mr. Loney was acquitted and the judge hoped the case would send a warning to every hockey player in the country. That warning has yet to be heeded.
This morning, the NHL will announce Todd Bertuzzi's punishment for attacking and horribly injuring Mr. Moore in a game on Monday. He may face criminal charges. His life has changed forever because of this incident.
I would bet that the overriding emotion he felt during that game was something beyond anger or the desire to avenge Mr. Moore's hit on Markus Naslund, the Vancouver captain. No, I would wager that what he felt most powerfully that night was loyalty. Loyalty to a very close friend and teammate.
Bobby Orr used to talk about the old Boston Bruins as "a team of brothers." As Mr. Bertuzzi no doubt saw it, a brother had fallen in battle and a brother would respond in kind. It's the law of hockey.
Here's another thing I learned as I studied the game and its history. I talked to former NHLers Marty McSorley and Red Horner and Ken Dryden and Eric Nesterenko and many others, many smart and articulate people and I was grateful for their insights. But the one ex-pro who got me thinking hardest was Morris Mott, a smallish forward with Team Canada in the late 1960s, and later with the now defunct California Golden Seals, and now a professor of Canadian history at Brandon University in Manitoba. He talked about the "hockey code" and "codes within codes."
The Hockey Code, at least in part, compelled Todd Bertuzzi to do what he did. The problem, says Prof. Mott, is that "everyone feels the code but no one is exactly sure how it works. That's because not everyone can agree on what transpired five seconds ago, or five games ago."
Was Steve Moore's hit on Markus Naslund legal? Was Mr. Moore intending to injure? Did he even know it was Mr. Naslund he was about to hit? I don't know, but if you watch any hockey game -- at any level, pro or amateur, midget or peewee -- you will see how intently players watch the game. They miss nothing. And so, every player on both the Vancouver Canucks and the Colorado Avalanche would have had his own take on that hit and the retribution, or not, required.
I'm grateful to Morris Mott for another insight. He has researched 19th-century hockey in the West, and what he found was this: Early hockey referees were little more than consultants. In the days before nets, each team fired at two posts stuck in the ice. There was often doubt about whether the puck had gone through, or not. Players would "claim" a goal and the referee or goal judge would verify the claim. There were many cases of referees being hounded from arenas or teams leaving the ice to protest the referee's incompetence. Like Rodney Dangerfield, the referee got no respect. Not much has changed in that regard.
This, too, is what landed Todd Bertuzzi in very deep, very hot water. Players have no faith in the referees to catch every slight, never mind every imagined slight. Players rule themselves and Don Cherry would have you believe that's the way it was and has to be.
Sometimes I wonder if the game is beyond policing. But to think like that is to fall prey to the arrogance that defines hockey as a special case: Hockey's not like those other sports. We carry sticks, we move at the speed of sprinters, we change on the fly. We do things differently in our game.
None of that justifies violence. In 1905, Allan Loney could at least argue that he responded in kind to another man's aggression. It all happened in a blur. Todd Bertuzzi, I'm afraid, will not have that crutch. He hit the other man from behind and it will be argued that the act was premeditated. And the roof will cave in on Todd Bertuzzi. They will blame him.
But the blame is far more widespread than that. Blame the coaches who incite their players and put their goons on the ice in the last minute of play during meaningless or lopsided losses. Blame players who speak brazenly of putting "a bounty" on another player's head. Blame referees who look the other way and put their whistles in their pockets and "let the boys play" during the third period of tied games. Blame owners who think a little violence sells tickets. Blame courts that treat hockey violence so lightly at the professional level (amateur hockey violence is another matter). Blame fans who rise and cheer when the gloves are dropped and who buy hockey-violence videos. Blame the smirking sportscasters who make fights part of their late-night highlights and who celebrate "good, old-time hockey."
Old-time it may well be. But there's nothing good about that side of an otherwise beautiful game. Todd Bertuzzi and Steve Moore are only the latest to learn that hard truth.
Lawrence Scanlan is the author of Grace Under Fire: The State of Our Sweet and Savage Game. He lives in Kingston, Ont.