COLE: PRONGER’S PERFECT TO KEEP NHL PLAYERS SAFER
Former galoot’s trained eye may help player safety
The talented Nick Cotsonika of Yahoo Sports, who ought to be on everyone’s list as a go- to source of hockey wisdom and sober second thought, broke the story of the season on Wednesday.
Of course, it was the first day of the hockey season, but that’s beside the point. The point is: Chris Pronger! Applying/ being strongly considered for a job in the National Hockey League’s Department of Player Safety!
Normally we’re not fans of exclamation points, but we’ll make an exception in this case.
To recap: the department of player safety, the title given to the sheriff’s office when Brendan Shanahan took it over from the beleaguered Colin Campbell — and which is now under the largely untested stewardship of Stephane Quintal — is pondering a role for one of the certifiably great defencemen, and villains, in the annals of the NHL.
“If you want to build a better safe, hire a safecracker,” Cotsonika wrote, in arguing the case for Pronger as “an inspired choice” to help out with supplemental discipline and, per the department’s mandate, making hockey a safer game for its participants.
Well, I guess so, though it might be like hiring John Rambo to lead the campaign for gun control. But let’s put that aside for now.
Pronger, who turns 40 on Friday, is not officially retired because, by remaining on the Philadelphia Flyers’ longterm injured reserve list, he can still draw salary while not counting against the team’s salary cap. But he has not played in nearly three years since his career was ended by a series of hits to the head in the fall of 2011, the last by Phoenix’s Martin Hanzal, that led to severe post- concussion syndrome, some symptoms of which he still suffers.
For all practical purposes, then, he is out of the game and has no active involvement with the Flyers.
So the idea that he can’t possibly act impartially for the league when he’s still being paid by one of its teams is a side issue. He could recuse himself, the way Colin Campbell did with his son Gregory’s team, the Boston Bruins, on matters involving the Flyers.
No, the issue is: does the NHL, still in the early days of groping its way to a postNeanderthal era of enlightenment, dare entrust even an advisory role to a man who so egregiously flouted the rules as a player?
Pronger’s list of priors reads like something off a Most Wanted poster.
The Reader’s Digest version? Four games for fracturing Pat Peake’s thyroid cartilage with a hit in the throat, four games for swinging his stick at Jeremy Roenick’s head, a game for leaving the bench to fight Kelly Buchberger, two games for cross- checking Brenden Morrow in the face, one game for kicking Calgary’s Ville Nieminen, one game for plastering Detroit’s Tomas Holmstrom into the glass in the playoffs, one game for cold- cocking Ottawa’s Dean McAmmond with an elbow in the 2007 Cup final, eight games for stomping on Ryan Kesler’s leg with his skate.
Now, there’s no doubt that he walked the fine line between ornery and dangerous ( and crossed it many times) for nearly two decades, so he definitely knows, and could spot, a dirty play, a sneaky- dirty play, a dive, and pretty much every other variety of hockey skulduggery.
The NHL needs that kind of trained eye in the DPS, which is how Shanahan got the job.
Pronger also knows now, from personal suffering, the extent of the damage that can be done by reckless disregard for an opponent’s health.
It was written here, when it was clear he would never play again, that it was almost poetic justice: imagine Chris Pronger stricken by a concussion, after so many years as a carrier.
He also still suffers some vision impairment from a high stick by Mikhail Grabovski, which some believe was the beginning of his concussion problems.
All in all, you might think he already has had enough headaches, and volunteering for dozens more while trying to clean up Dodge City is no way to go gently into the hockey afterlife.
But he does deserve an afterlife. And for some reason, I kind of think it might work.
Trying not to let the big galoot’s gap- toothed grin and sarcastic put- downs impair my judgment here, but ... maybe the only way to catch a bad guy with a hockey stick is to hire a bad guy with a bank of video monitors.
If it happens, this will be his toughest test: looking directly into the camera lens while explaining the reasoning behind a suspension, and saying the words, “I’m Chris Pronger of the Department of Player Safety” without that telltale smirk.
He’d have to practise in front of a mirror.