How strange, on such a sad day, to witness first-hand the bizarre, often incomprehensible relationship that exists between child's game and adult violence.
Stefan Della Rovere, who comes as close as Team Canada dares to an enforcer in its quest for a fifth consecutive victory at the world junior hockey championship, is describing an on-ice incident in last Wednesday's 7-4 victory over the United States.
He is 18, plays for the Barrie Colts of the OHL, and is as sweet and self-deprecating off the ice as he is agitating and arrogant on.
Della Rovere was so far under the skin of the Americans at one point they were taunting him from the bench: "You're dead! You're dead! You're dead!"
In virtually every other hockey game this young man has played, the gloves would be thrown down and fists would fly - almost invariably with nothing but sore knuckles and perhaps a vanity cut to follow.
Usually, but not always.
Yesterday morning, Della Rovere and his Canadian teammates had been given the news that Don Sanderson, a 21-year-old - just one year removed from junior age - had succumbed to injuries suffered when his head struck the ice during a senior game in Ontario between the Whitby Dunlops and Brantford Blast.
Sanderson had fought with a Brantford player and his helmet came off before his head hit the ice. He had been in a coma and on life support since Dec. 13. And though death had been anticipated, it still arrived with shock.
Della Rovere had been so saddened to hear the news he wanted to send "my best wishes to the family."
Team Canada head coach Pat Quinn, no stranger to tough and rough hockey, said it was "a terrible thing to happen" and had no idea "how hockey will look on this sort of thing."
"There's no place for death if it can be avoided," Quinn said. "I don't know what the right answer is."
There is no perfect answer, of course. Accidents will happen - though it's important to note no scrap would have meant no accident in this case - and, regrettably, fighting remains part of the male condition from war to what George Orwell called sports: "war minus the shooting."
But that does not mean there are no answers. And one can be found right here.
As the Americans taunted - "You're dead!" - a small caution flag rose behind Della Rovere's blazing eyes.
"You're playing for your country," he said. "You can't be stepping over that line.
"It's supposed to be a non-fighting tournament. ... You can't be trying to fight because it's a game misconduct," Della Rovere said.
Exactly. Unlike in the NHL, there is a price to be paid in international hockey by those who stop games so they can take punches at each other. Not so in the NHL, where play simply resumes while the brawlers head off to collect their five minutes, which amounts to their "goals" and "assists" and is the measure of their worth come contract time.
No wonder Al Purdy called the game "this combination of ballet and murder."
Accident or non-accident is not the debate here, but what can, and must, be done to remove as much violence from the game as would still allow hockey to be a collision sport requiring tenacity from its players.
It seems simply obvious that heads require as much protection as possible in the game. This would include simply doing up the chin straps supplied with each helmet. (Though how not doing it up became a hockey "fashion" is as unfathomable, as is how doffing one's helmet before fighting became part of hockey chivalry.)
It should also include, as well, all hits to the head, whether accidental or not. If hockey can have a penalty for accidentally firing the puck over the boards in your own end, then surely it can also have a penalty for "accidentally" sending a shoulder into an opponent's head. And though hitting from behind has been strongly addressed in minor leagues and somewhat addressed in the higher leagues, it needs to be eliminated entirely by severe punishment.
As to fighting itself, there are again partial answers if not complete ones. Individual players can be kicked out of games for fighting - as apparently is the case in that Ontario senior league - but teams need, as well, to suffer the consequences. It is, after all, a team sport, and other tough team sports deal with fighting. As for hockey's argument that a "safety valve" is required, how come those other sports require no safety valve?
The QMJHL put in new rules concerning fighting this fall after an ugly incident concerning the goaltending son of Hockey Hall of Famer Patrick Roy. And real consequences have had profound consequences, with fighting down by more than half this year. The likely long-term effect is that the NHL - with fighting up these past two seasons - will think less of Quebec junior players for this.
As for Della Rovere, a draft pick of the NHL's Washington Capitals, he is among the many who feels that "fighting is part of the game."
"But," he says in a most curious choice of words, "it's out of my hands and out of all the players' hands to make that call. It's up to the league."
Sadly, he is right.
