Weighing In

Sorry about the long silence, but travel and social engagements have kept me too busy to blog recently. Today, though, my mom and I have vowed to do nothing but wrap presents, and watch The Muppet Christmas Carol, so I'm going to seize the opportunity to unload about something that's been clogging up my brain for too long.

I don't have much to say about the Sabres play at the moment that a simple "thumbs up" won't cover, so allow me to travel way back in time to re-visit an issue that has been pretty well covered by many blogs already. Just to refresh your memories:



You'll find the bulk of my reaction already expressed in the aforelinked posts, so I'm going to do my best not to be redundant, but there are two particular quotes that I want to respond to. The first comes from this article in The Buffalo News:

"I tried to hit [Kaleta] and missed a little bit," Ruutu told the Ottawa Citizen. "My shoulder hit his head and then his head hit the glass. That was really it. Not much you could do."

This is a quote I find akin to Alex Ovechkin's "Nobody can kill me" reaction to criticism of his reckless play. I tried to blog about that gem at the time, but as always when I try to articulate my hatred of Ovie, I was too blinded by crimson rage to manage anything more than incoherent sputtering. The words I couldn't get out then are the same I have to offer Ruutu now: In my opinion, this kind of attitude doesn't belong in hockey. This is one of the most dangerous sports in the world. It's a sport where grown (sometimes over-grown) men slam into each other while traveling at top speeds on a low-friction surface. It's a sport where players swing fiberglass sticks around to propel a piece of frozen galvanized rubber through the air at speeds approaching 100mph. Not to mention the fact that everyone has razor blades strapped to the bottoms of their feet. Someone certainly can kill you, Ovie. Even though it hasn't happened yet, it's not that hard to imagine. In fact, I almost have a harder time imagining how it hasn't happened yet. What I'm trying to say is hockey is the last place you want to play fast and loose with safety. This is a sport where unavoidable, freak accidents have ended in arterial spatter on the ice. So, in my opinion, "I missed," just doesn't cut it. Personally, I don't buy that Ruutu wasn't aiming for Kaleta's head, but even if he wasn't, he shouldn't get off suspension-free just because he says there was nothing he could do. Accidents do happen, but you should have better control of your body than that or you shouldn't be playing hockey. Period. And don't tell me it's that hard, because most other players seem to manage. If they didn't, players like Ruutu, Neil, and--yes--Kaleta wouldn't stand out the way they do.

I understand that that's not entirely fair--after all, not all styles of play were created equally in this regard. Tim Connolly not properly controlling his body will more likely result in him losing the puck than someone lying unconscious on the ice. So I understand that while some players are able to stay away from the line between safe and reckless play altogether, others are forced to toe it in order to perform their role on the team. So how are they supposed to stay toeing the right side of the line? Well, that leads me to my next quote:

I'll be worried about Kaleta's quality of life after hockey when he starts showing an ounce of concern for his fellow players' quality of life after hockey.

This was a comment to the blog post from Top Shelf that I linked to above. I don't really have that much of a problem with this statement, given that it's coming from a fan. As much as I like to think that I would still be uneasy about this hit even if Kaleta had been on the giving end of it, if it had been Neil or Avery on the receiving end, I probably would be less upset. But that's the entitlement of a fan. We get to have subjective judgment and hold unfounded and unjustly long grudges. The problem is that this seems to be the same stance the league is taking on this issue, and they don't have the same entitlements. They have obligations to keep the rules of the game well-defined and to keep the players of the game safe, and they don't get to ignore those obligations just because it's "just" Kaleta lying on the ice. Heather did an excellent job explaining why, when it comes to issues of safety, all players are created equal, regardless of their talent level--although it's really sad to think that the league needs a blogger to point that out to them. Letting goons and bruisers beat up on each other as much as they like as long as they don't touch the "important" players doesn't count as fair strategy. I'm not sure it counts as strategy at all, actually. Trusting players to police each other and trusting them to keep each other safe are almost entirely mutually exclusive, as it turns out, so the neutral authority is going to have to step in at some point. Like it or not, Kaleta showing respect for other players' safety starts with the league forcing other players to respect his. Until that happens, the vicious cycle of "a boarding for a boarding" will continue to leave the whole world with mushy brains.

Of course, it's not certain that more suspensions are the answer to cleaning up the game, especially with one of the league's premiere players going around telling the world that no amount of discipline is going to make him change his ways. But that's still no excuse for not trying.

One thing is for sure, though: everyone's looking forward to meeting the Sens on the day after Christmas, and right now I'm glad that I happen to have tickets. Here's hoping I'm still happy to have had them on the day after the day after Christmas.

By the way, about last night's game against the Capitals: I'm afraid that was all my fault. I forewent (if that's a word) watching the game in order to go see New Moon with my sister. That's a bold admission to make in a public forum, to be sure, but rest assured that we went in irony. I had planned on zipping through the game on DVR this morning, but it seems the Sabres took it upon themselves to try to play a game even worse than New Moon, in order to make me feel better about ditching them. I'm sure they didn't actually succeed, but I can't imagine watching a hockey game that even approached that level of awfulness was a pleasant experience. So I'd like to apologize to everyone whose night I ruined. Believe me, it will not happen again.