the debate on sports violence

In Game 3, Sunday's loss, I got a close up look at Tom throwing a pretty violent body check directly in front of the bench. Head coach Steve approved, the bench liked it, and on the way home Tom mentioned that once the game was lost, he spent his shifts cruising around for big hits. Hmmm...now that's worth reflecting on, especially since I made a college career out of cruising around for big hits. Big, crushing hits kept nagging doubts about skill defficiencies at bay, my teammates liked them and it got me plenty of attentiton from the fans. It was a super frustration release as well. Like my football playing buddy Kevin once shared with me, "It's always better to be the hammer than the nail."

There you have it, then. Is there any room for debate? You play in a contact sport, and push it to the max. Except today, I don't buy the hammer-nail solution anymore. If I've got an 11 year old son launching his body at opponents evrey time he's frustrated, where will it end? In a year or two he's going to have the fun little hormone testosterone added to his chemical mix, and the impacts will have even "greater" consequences. Then what?

In high school and college and a time or two after college, I had some knockouts on the ice, including a whopper in an NCAA semifinal. You know the genre--the guy goes to sleep for a while lying on the ice; Everyone gets kind of quiet; You hope it was a shoulder, not a stick or an elbow that did the damage so that yourreputation comes out OK in the post-mortem. I did that to a lacrosse teammate the same afternoon I got turned down for college admission from a safety school. Two years later I saw him at a keg party visting my brother at the Univ. of Wisconsin. He was all smiles as we lined up at the tap, and with no hard feelings. He mentioned that his head still wasn't quite right since that hit, like his circuitry was still altered and the synapses were still trying to find new routes. Wow, that's kind of freaky, I thought, and went on to other subjects and other people. I had made a college varsity team playing the violence card, I wasn't going to start any serious reflecting just then.

Well, now is the time. Here's the lesson for Tom. Big hits don't require that much skill. There's a little timing involved, and you have to have a fairly sturdy body and the proper mindset, and that's about it. Tom has a gift for goal scoring, which requires much more skill (hands for one) and a similar amount of toughness, though it's more of the "nail" toughness than the "hammer," but it's toughness nevertheless. And the pain you put on opponents after scoring is actually more enduring; they never get the goal off the scoresheet. And as a player with severe offensive limitations, I know how belittling getting scored on can be. It's the ultimate insult, and it goes up electronically for everyone to see.

So I'm going to try and curb Tom's enthusiasm for the big blow. Get him to push himself physically when he's frustrated (and tired) to do all the things necessary to generate offense, which is the tougher task. My new prescribed mentality for checking is to do anything you can to separate the opponent from the puck, but still allow you to escape with it. If you use your body as a torpedo, you're probably not going to be able to recover in time to corral the puck and get it going in a positive direction. Think of the European stars in the NHL, the ones with superior offensive skills. They don't mind checking, but it's to get the puck and get the offense going, not to separate a player from his senses.

My only reservation is a love for an engaging forecheck. Wearing down defensemen by hitting them over and over, maybe a second after they've passed it, so they know a hit is coming can be quite effective over the course of a game. I used to love Mike Keenan's comments about seeing how well a defenseman can make breakout passes with his face pressed against the glass. I'm going to need some time to wrestle with my next rationalization for this scenario. In the meantime, let's hear it for Nails that can snipe over Hammers that re-route one's circuitry.

P.S. you might have already guessed that my circuitry has been re-routed as well.