Fighting mad
NHL's promotion of pugilism is sick, and out of touch
IF YOU didn’t know better, you’d have thought you collided with one of those blood sports pay-per-view come-ons, perhaps the weigh-in. Hey, sports fans, don’t miss the carnage!
But it was the NHL Network, Saturday morning, because later that day the Maple Leafs would play the Rangers in Toronto, thus the promotional promise of career pugilist Ryan Reaves, now with his sixth NHL team, throwing fists against recent Rangers fists-first call-up Matt Rempe made for the scent of blood in the air and on the air.
Reaves, in an interview conducted the day before, said he’s ready to fight Rempe, as if it were part of the curriculum. Come and get it!
There was no evidence provided — likely because none existed — that Rempe and Reaves had ever played against each other, thus no pre-existing animosity was in play. This was to be a baseless, senselessly stupid schoolyard throwdown, and NHLN had determined that it would join in stirring the most visceral syrup in media and fans via fists-clenched hands.
So in 2024, the NHL, which has largely evolved to become a speed and skill game, still can’t shake its Neanderthal tradition that too often relegates humans to neurological decay.
Despite growing evidence that hockey players’ lives have been ruined — including early death and suicides due to CTE — NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, taking the Fight! Fight! Fight!, populist, good-for-business path, has dismissed such evidence as media hysteria, thus more of a public relations issue than a human one.
Yet if one were to track the post-hockey lives of career “enforcers” one would ask why there’s still room for such on professional rosters.
Many hockey fans will recall a career pug named Bob Probert, a villain who landed and received punches to the head throughout the 1990s, playing for Detroit and Chicago.
After his sudden death at 45, his wife suspected his years of trading fists to the head was pertinent. She had his brain donated for intensive examination by Boston University’s Medical School which found that. Probert suffered from a degenerative brain disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a condition also common among former NFL player, and boxers, with MMA fighters in line.
Or was BU’s conclusion the result of media hysterics?
Dead-by-35 NHLers found to have suffered from CTE include Derek Boogaard, an “enforcer” who briefly played for the Rangers, Steve Montador and Canucks’ undrafted tough guy Rick Rypien who committed suicide at 27.
Montador’s brief life after playing for six NHL teams was an excruciating hell as he couldn’t suffer any noise above a whisper, and rarely left his room. Montador had been a willing in-game fighter, as, undrafted, he did what it took to stick.
But hey, Reaves and Rempe, for no sensible reason beyond popular demand, got it on Saturday, punching each other in the head as per their job descriptions.
There have been too many opportunities to do much better to not have not done somewhat better.
Muhammad Ali was a trembling, mumbling mess in middle age as have been countless boxers. But when Ali’s greatest enabler and cut-man (he always took a big cut), Don King, took great care to reference Ali’s neurological impairment as “Parkinson’s Disease,” a naturally occurring affliction.
But that was nonsense. Ali was suffering from Parkinson’s syndrome, which mimics the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. Ali’s condition is/was also known as dementia pugilistica, CTE caused by being hit in the head too often.
And beyond all of the above, a selfish lament: As a lifelong NHL fan I thought the time had passed when I was forced to rationalize or ignore the fighting as what hockey-haters perceived as the essence of the game. “Went to a fight and a hockey game broke out.” Hah, hah.
That part of the game was on the deep fade — and not a moment too soon. But Saturday morning, even the NHL Network was eager to restore the NHL as a sport that rewards goonery in service to the business of pleasing bloodthirsty fans and media.
And both teams, after the obligatory fight, slapped the boards with their sticks to demonstrate their approval. After all, the fighters’ heads weren’t theirs.
Put it this way: If the intent was not to bash opponents’ heads with their fists, players wouldn’t be celebrated for their eagerness to “drop the gloves.” As a matter of civilized sport as well as the growing incidents of CTE, they’d be punished for not leaving their gloves on to soften the blows.