When a hockey incident in Canada, in this case Todd Bertuzzi's attack on Steve Moore, dominates the conversation on phone-in shows across the United States, something extraordinary has happened.
"All we can hope for is Tampa Bay winning the Stanley Cup, the league shutting down next year," a radio host in Tampa said this week, "and Canadians going to hell."
Canadians? Well, look at it this way: National Hockey League players from every borough and burg break the rules once in a while. But the really goofy stuff, the attack that incites headlines around the world, is inevitably committed by a Canadian player.
Emile Therien, the president of the Canada Safety Council and father of Dallas Stars defenceman Chris Therien, has no difficulty linking Canadian hockey with violence. He's also concerned about the role played by the CBC.
Yesterday, Therien sent a letter to Carole Taylor, the chairwoman of the CBC, blaming Hockey Night in Canada for being a willing participant in condoning violence in hockey. "We attribute a large part of the whole issue of the mindset of violence in hockey to Coach's Corner," Therien said in an interview.
Whether it's fair to draw Don Cherry and his intermission show into the Bertuzzi controversy is worth asking. But consider Cherry's record: He rarely highlights goal scorers. His attitude toward skilled players is condescending, even disdainful. For more than 20 years, he has been glorifying fighters and airing clips of just about every cheap shot delivered during the week.
Cherry's views are extreme, but generally the Canadian hockey media have supported the NHL's game and its Darwinian code of conduct.
For example, several commentators this week said they felt every bit as sorry for Bertuzzi as they did for Moore. It didn't matter that Bertuzzi, the 245-pound Vancouver Canucks forward, jumped Moore from behind, slammed his fist into the side of Moore's head and attempted to keep pummelling him.
Nor did it seem to matter that Moore, the Colorado Avalanche forward, is in a Vancouver hospital with a broken neck.
Several explained Bertuzzi's attack by saying it was an emotional reaction within an emotional game — as if emotion is exclusive to hockey and doesn't exist in other sports, which seem to be able to police violence.
People outside the game thought Bertuzzi deserved to sit out for half a season or even a full season. But the hockey establishment predicted a much shorter suspension, certainly the remaining 12 regular-season games and perhaps the first round of the playoffs.
When the regular-season and postseason suspension was announced yesterday, hockey people were surprised.
"You can't help but be a little stunned," Vancouver Sun columnist Gary Mason said in a TV interview.
TSN's Bob McKenzie suggested the league overreacted.
"I think we've got to be careful we don't have a knee-jerk reaction," McKenzie said.
"To miss the entire Stanley Cup playoffs ..... is an unbelievably stiff penalty, and anybody who thinks otherwise doesn't understand the game."
The U.S. media may lack McKenzie's understanding of hockey, but they know a good story when they see it.
The attack ran on the front pages of major newspapers. Peter Jennings's ABC newscast aired the clip.
ESPN gave it wall-to-wall coverage. So did CNN.
As the NHL's image plunged to an all-time low, a USA Today sports columnist wished the league would just go away.
"It is a cartoon sport with a cult following that cheers from the fringe of relevance," Ian O'Connor wrote.
"Who among us would notice if, this autumn, we found ourselves surveying a sports landscape without major league hockey?" asked Christine Brennan, another USA Today columnist. "And how many of us would complain?"
Canadian broadcaster Don Chevrier was asked about the reaction in Florida, where he lives.
"The reaction here is one word," he said. "Disgust.
"It's really sad," continued Chevrier, who called hockey games for years. "I've lost all respect for the game."
Olympic producer Ralph Mellanby, who was the head of Hockey Night in Canada for 20 years and whose son Scott plays for the St. Louis Blues, lives in Atlanta.
He blames "Neanderthals" in the NHL's front office for the Bertuzzi incident, citing the league's leniency toward violent infractions and failure to punish players and coaches who make threats.
"It's the greatest game in the world being destroyed by the people who run it," Mellanby said. "There's no fighting in college hockey, no fighting at the world tournaments or the Olympics, and nobody misses it. But these cement heads at the NHL don't get it." Unless the game changes, Mellanby said, the NHL is doomed in the United States to permanent third-class status.
"Down here, hockey is on a par with pro wrestling and roller derby," he said. "Stuff like that."
No argument from Bernie Lincicome, a columnist with the Rocky Mountain News in Denver.
"This is what hockey wants to be," he wrote this week. "This is why hockey is a boutique sport, like cockfighting and bear baiting."
Cherry refuses ABC
[DROP]CBC Sports was flooded with calls from U.S. networks this week asking to interview Cherry about the Bertuzzi incident. Cherry refused, but, of course, will talk about it on Coach's Corner tomorrow.
·The Score's NHL trade deadline coverage produced big numbers on Tuesday. The network averaged 74,000 viewers from noon to 6 p.m. EST, for a 118-per-cent increase from last year. From 4 p.m. to 5 p.m., The Score outdrew Sportsnet, with 124,000 viewers, compared with Sportsnet's 89,000.
·Vancouver's first game since the Bertuzzi incident, on Wednesday against the Minnesota Wild, was TSN's top-rated West Coast regional game of the season: 449,000 viewers.
