CKNW Editorial
for March 8, 2000

My God! Before we know it, Marty McSorley will be the hero of the piece and Donald Brashear the villain! Poor old Marty, he says, has been through enough ... and don't forget it was all Mark Crawford's fault for sending Donald Brashear out on the ice with just seconds to go. Why, if he hadn't done that, Boston coach Pat Burns would never have sent McSorley out. And, if the dog hadn't stopped to take a pee he'd have caught the cat.

Sportswriters are rushing to the defence of McSorley and the game. It seems that we the people and those who enforce the law just don't understand. Well, let old Uncle Rafe help.

You see, Donald Brashear is a bad guy. The Canucks need him because all the other teams have a bad guy too. This means that when a team is down a few goals, the coach has someone around to liven things up ... according to McSorley it's sort of a team thing, you see. Here's what he said to ESPN ... Our bench was challenged ... our team was challenged ... They had a substantial lead ... you're in a position where you stand up for your hockey team."

Right. When you get a couple of goals down in our national sport the coach waits until the other guy's goon is on the ice, sends his own goon who then crosschecks goon #2 and a hell of a fight starts  ... then if goon #1 wins the fight the team is off the hook for being down 4-1. Understand how it works now?

But there's more. What if goon #1 gets the crap beat out of him and thus loses face even more? What the hell does a coach do then? Well, he looks for another chance. And rather than giving his team hell for losing he says to goon #1, what the hell's the matter with you? You let goon #2 kick hell out of you meaning that our team spirit not only didn't rise but it went down even further. Are you going to take that? The delicious moment arrives. There are seconds to go and there on the ice, to the delight of the coach who has long since ceased paying any attention to the game itself and the score, sees goon #2 skating around and making faces at your team ... he's even calling them bad names. This calls for action ... Really, there is little else a coach can do than send goon #1 out on the ice to get revenge. Now goon #1, still smarting and hurting from the shitkicking he took earlier certainly isn't going to take a chance that it will happen again so he does the only thing any red blooded boy with his teammates honour at stake can do - he smashes goon #2 from behind over the head with his stick ... I mean surely we can all see the justification for this. You can't let a guy get away with saying naaa naaa to your poor teammates suffering a loss.

Now, of course, this has nothing to do with the police. As the Province's Tony Gallagher points out in this morning's Province, the NHL has always looked after that sort of thing in the past ... why change now and let the law get involved?

Wash your mouth out with soap for asking why, if the NHL was the place to solve this kind of thing that it still goes on. And if you ask why the NHL doesn't simply ban fighting by assessing a match penalty the first time, a month's suspension without pay the second and a year's suspension for the third why you're a pantywaist ... don't you understand the game at all? Never mind that virtually none of the bloodthirsty fans in the stands could handle a fight with their mother-in-law with her hands and feet bound, why this is hockey! And we Canadians are tough ... I mean we can take it. And just because we sit here with our beer bellies hanging out while dying for a cigarette doesn't mean that we'd not fight the other guys goon if he insulted us! Lemme at him? I'll teach him. Why if that glass wasn't between us, I'd punch his lights out!

Get real out there, folks. This is idiocy. The system of hockey playing is slightly organized savagery. The law does not go on hold when a hockey game is involved.

And isn't it interesting - I'll bet that 99% of those who are mad at the law for dealing with McSorley scream to the heavens that there's too much violence on TV ... in the movies ... and in video games. After all, how can we teach our children to be civilized if we don't care about what they see? Gallagher ends his column on the note that this charge is being laid because hockey players are high profile.

Right. Please let my client go, your honour, because he is so well known ... and tell the police to go back to charging people no one has ever heard of. A maladjusted bum playing in a maladjusted game in front of a maladjusted society and we fell sorry for him. What a pack of ignorant hypocrites we've all become.