No sport does self-loathing quite like hockey, with its spellbinding start to the playoffs undercut by the narrative that the NHL is out of control, its product overrun by thuggery and the league office blithely stuck in a 1970s time warp.
But for all the hand-wringing over the malicious hits, “Slap Shot”-style brawls and absurdly weak punishments handed out by discipline czar Brendan Shanahan, let’s set self-righteousness aside for a moment and acknowledge hockey is demanding people’s attention for the first time in years.
The playoffs may be brutal to the point of being out of control, the punishments cosmetic to the point of laughable, but nobody’s turning off their televisions or fleeing from arenas. And once you get past the shock value of Sidney Crosby — he of the multiple concussion issues — squaring off with Philadelphia’s Claude Giroux on Sunday in the midst of a WWE-style fracas, there is an incontrovertible truth that hockey has tapped into over the past week.
Nothing sells like hate and fans are starving for it, even as hockey’s protective media try to make them feel ashamed of it.
We are in the midst of perhaps the most genteel era in the history of professional sports. The NFL has basically legislated the violence out of its product, breeding a dislike for commissioner Roger Goodell among players that is far stronger than what they have for each other. Baseball has one rivalry that matters, and even that is subject to debate these days with the Yankees and Red Sox getting old and losing their grip on prominence. Viciousness in the NBA is conducted mostly behind the scenes by agents trying to poach each other’s clients, not the superstars who’d rather cluster together than compete against each other for championships. Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson hate each other but won’t acknowledge it. The Big Three in tennis can’t stop praising each other.
But the first week of the NHL playoffs has given us pure, authentic sports hate on a nightly basis, from coast-to-coast. And people are paying attention.
While much of the hockey world has been blasting away at Shanahan and the NHL’s alleged lack of discipline, NBC said yesterday ratings for its games last weekend were up 50 percent over last year. Game 3 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinal series between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers — which pretty much devolved into a wrestling match by the second period — registered the best overnight rating in 10 years for a non-Stanley Cup Finals game. The brawl as time expired in Saturday’s Sharks-Blues game had over 110,000 YouTube hits in 24 hours, and the most striking thing about the video is that every fan in the building was on their feet, cheering as loud as they had all night.
And the NHL is supposed to be embarrassed about this?
Full disclosure: If fighting was removed from hockey, I would not miss it. But to say I haven’t been thoroughly entertained by the nastiness of these playoffs would be dishonest. The idea that many of these teams have an authentic dislike for each other, the idea that all hell could break loose at any moment, has made for some hypnotic viewing — especially for a sport that frequently gets accused of being bad on television.
Which isn’t to gloss over the fact that some of what we’ve seen has been regrettable, from the Rangers’ Carl Hagelin delivering a head shot to Ottawa captain Daniel Alfredsson to Pittsburgh’s Arron Asham issuing a vicious cross-check to the throat of Brayden Schenn, then punching him in the back of the head as he collapsed on the ice. There have been similar moments of mayhem in nearly every series, and they should be dealt with. But they’re also good for business.
The collective hockey conscience has trouble reconciling those two issues, which is why Shanahan is under attack for handing out penalties that don’t seem to have much consistency from one to the next. Nashville’s Shea Weber received only a fine (maximum $2,500) for trying to drive Henrik Zetterberg’s head into the glass, while Vancouver’s Byron Bitz got a two-game suspension for boarding Kyle Clifford of the Los Angeles Kings. The difference? Zetterberg was uninjured, while Clifford missed the next two games.
No matter how cowardly or dirty or potentially dangerous an act, punishment in the NHL is based on the outcome rather than the intent. That’s a mistake, especially when Shanahan’s official title — vice president of player safety — suggests his role should be more proactive than reactive.
But is suspending players an extra game or two or even three really going to make a difference?
Just like in the NFL, the NHL is becoming increasingly more aware of concussions and their impact on the sport. But this is a physical, rugged, fast game played in a confined space, and the participants will always have to accept an element of danger and risk. All you can do is draw the line and punish the ones that step over it. Rinse and repeat.
But to criticize the NHL for bringing that line down to the lowest common denominator is hockey snobbery at its self-loathing worst. What we’ve seen the past week isn’t driving people away from the sport, it’s getting their attention and their eyeballs. Hockey is bringing hate back to sports, and we can’t look away. That says less about the NHL than it says about us.
