The National Hockey League and its players’ union are promising to investigate off-ice deaths and examine ways to support players during and after their careers, as the hockey world reels from the second suicide of a tough guy in less than three weeks.
The death of Wade Belak, found hanging in a Toronto hotel room Wednesday, preceded by the suicide of Rick Rypien and a drug overdose that killed Derek Boogaard earlier this summer, has heightened scrutiny on the level of violence tolerated in the NHL.
It comes as the sport is already grappling with the troubling issue of head injuries, as personified by one of its brightest and most marketable stars, Sidney Crosby, who remains sidelined by a concussion. Now, the crisis has moved to the other end of the NHL bench, focusing on the enforcers who grind out a living with their fists, and raising new questions about whether hockey fights are breeding mental illness. A growing chorus of critics from both inside and outside the league is calling for it to re-examine its love affair with violence, leaving the game facing one of its darkest hours.
“We’re understanding a lot more about the physical component of blows to the head, short-term effects and long-term effects. Do we understand the emotional part of that?” said Craig Button, who served as general manger of the Calgary Flames when Mr. Belak played there. “We talk about the role of the enforcer, that guy’s the one who’s supposed to protect teammates and look out for everybody’s back, so to speak. I ask the question: Who’s looking out for the enforcer? Who protects his back?”
In a joint statement Thursday, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and Players’ Association executive director Don Fehr said their organizations will examine “in detail, the factors that may have contributed to these [deaths],” and determine “whether concrete steps can be taken to enhance player welfare” by improving substance-abuse and mental-health treatment programs.
Some of the tough guys are also speaking out. Kurt Walker, who hard-knuckled his way into the NHL in the 1970s, underwent 17 hockey-related surgeries and became addicted to painkillers, said he fears the deaths will continue if officials don’t take action.
“I hope this is just the beginning, not only for the players in the game but for all the guys who played before,” he said. “There are hundreds of guys in the U.S. who have no medical coverage and who feel as if they’ve been treated like a piece of meat.”
Retirement can be particularly hard on enforcers. Besides having to find a new line of work, there is the psychological decompression after being trained to fight.
“You kind of have to lose the traits that were beneficial for the game of hockey, which is a contact sport,” former NHLer Cam Connor said. “Now I’m in the real world I don’t need those kind of characteristics in my personality any more. I’ve got to learn to just let things go and relax.”
But if Mr. Belak was battling any demons, they remain a mystery. There was no suicide note with his body, nor any sign of drugs in his luxury hotel suite in Toronto’s financial district when a housekeeper discovered him dead late Wednesday morning, a police source said.
Nor did his personality offer any clues. From the time he was a child, recalled his father, Lionel Aadland, he was passionate about hockey and would cry when other kids weren’t taking it seriously enough. But off the ice, he was an easygoing, affable man who knew how to get along with people.
“His strength was not in the scoring of goals, it was in looking after his teammates and I guess trying to keep people in line. And he tried to do that as best he could but I know he didn’t like the fighting, to him it just came with the job,” said Mr. Aadland in an interview from his home in the British Columbia Interior.
