I grew up in a small country town who’s main interests were drinking, cows and football. My dad put in swimming pools for a living and my mother raised us and cut hair. I was lucky however, to have two of the most accepting parents you could imagine. My father once drove a bus for a drag tour and also (in his 20′s) routinely dressed up as a Japanese Geisha for reasons unknown. My mother was a hairdresser. They never judged, accepted everyone and taught me much the same.

Brendan Burke came out to his team mates, many of whom probably didn’t come from families like mine, but grew up in towns like the one I did, small, country and undeniably close minded. He had listened to years and years of chirping centered around insults to ones sexuality, the perceived ultimate in insults if  locker room trash talk was any indication. It had lead to him quitting playing in his final years of high school, unable to bear the talk, the degradation of his self. Still he came out, running the risk of loosing the trust and friendship of the hockey brotherhood he had found as a student manager at Miami-Ohio.

Not only did he come out to his hockey team, he came out to a father that is widely regarded as a prototype of masculinity in an already masculine sport. He takes a risk, at loosing a family that so many of us could never consider making. He takes a risk at rejection and shame that would send so many of us cowering and preferring to hide ourselves rather than run those risks. Instead, he finds acceptance grounded in the common sense belief that someones worth goes far beyond their sexual orientation, that persons value cannot be measured by who they love but by how they live.

The media jumps on this story, of the famous father’s acceptance of his son, the overwhelming acceptance of the hockey community to something still so taboo and suddenly Brendan Burke is everywhere, and everyone? Everyone is okay.

When Brendan Burke came out everyone heard about it. Thousands of hockey players across the country, across the world suddenly had a little bit of light they may not have had before. If Brian Burke can be okay with it, if a college hockey team can, maybe my coach, my team mates, friends and family can too.

Brendan Burke wanted to end the pattern of homophobia that was endemic to hockey and other sports. He wanted it to be okay for anyone to be who they were and to not feel shame for that, to be free to live how they wished without fear of loosing the sport and friends that meant so much. It is a goal, a dream many of us share, and in his memory, many of us will continue to carry on.

Your courage in stepping forward so publicly will serve as inspiration to many and the message you came forward with of acceptance will be remembered and carried forward. You were one of the firsts, but you will not be the last.

Rest in Peace, Brendan.

Cormier’s hit is not in question here. It was dirty. He lead with his elbow at a high speed and Tam suffered the consequences.  Further, Cormier is not a first time offender, instead a young player with an already disgusting reputation for this kind of play.

So where do we go from here?

Cormier needs to be suspended. Plain and simple. If you’re suspending based on the outcome, like the OHL has been (see Lambias), suspend him for a season. If anything, Cormier is probably more deserving of such a suspension, with the likelihood of injury occurring every time a hit is delivered in that manner being substantially higher than that of Lambias, which in my opinion the resulting injury was more from freak circumstances (the loss of the helmet in the fall, so forth).

However, now, the Quebec Provincial Police are reporting that they are investigating Cormier and the incident in the light of possible laying of charges.

This is where the problem I have arises. I, like a lot of people, have a real issue with the involvement of the police when it comes to punishing unacceptable behaviour or violence in sport.

In the United States, there has been one criminal case against a professional hockey player (there has been four criminal indictments of hockey players, but only one involved an NHL player, David Forbes) and Canada has seen several. The more famous of these include Regina v Ciccarelli (Dino was found guilty of assault, fined $1000 and ordered to serve a day in jail) and Regina v McSorley (the trial mainly centered around whether an incident in a professional hockey game could constitute assault with a weapon).

Society’s criminal sentencing system is underpinned by the concepts of retribution and deterrence.  We wish to punish what was done, to restore society to a state prior to the act and in turn prevent its further behaviour. A court can endeavour to do this but when (in accordance with precedent and law) the sentence may be little more than a handful of hours community service, a fine or a suspended sentence, is it going to be as effective as a substantial suspension or even a season long ban to enforce the message to not only the concerned player but the hockey community as a whole? There seems to be no worse punishment for a hockey player than to take away his right to play the game he loves.

Sporting leagues strive to maintain control over the punishment and regulation of its athletes and their actions. They argue, and I agree, that there is no need for outside judicial or legislative involvement in the majority of incidents (if you decapitated someone I’d be inclined to hand someone over to the police however). However, if the League, any league, wishes to remove these incidents from the game of hockey on its own terms, it is swift and harsh punishment that must be dealt out or more and more incidents will end up before the courts.

If Cormier does find himself in a court room in the future, it will not be just him that is on trial, but the sport of hockey and its ability to handle its own problems that will be brought into question.

Now we have a 16 year old who’s life has been changed forever, to what extent we don’t know, and a 20 year old who is facing much the same future.

It’s been said over and over again, at every single level of hockey. Headshots need to be taken out of the game.No one’s ever going to question you on that. Not a single fan with their salt as a fan would ever consider headshot a necessary part of the game of hockey.

However, people at all levels of the game and those in the media are saying it wasn’t. So if Branch, like the suspension indicates, wants to set an example of the leagues intolerance to head hitting, wouldn’t it be wiser to chose an actual cheap intentional head shot to do it with?
Maybe its just the lawyer side of my brain that draws this conclusion but wouldn’t it be more reasonable to make an example of the person who with full cognition of the illegal nature and potentially physically devastating impact of their actions, continued to do so?
Most, if not all legal systems find some part of the theoretical basis upon which punishment is developed centering around the concept of punishing the actions and intentions of the person rather than the outcomes of those actions. The most clear example of this is the distinction between sentencing in murder and manslaughter. Murder and manslaughter result in the same outcome, but the punishment varies depending on the intention to commit the act which reasonably would cause harm or on manslaughter’s case the absence of this intention.

The same principle could be drawn here between Liambos and Fanelli. The hit, which arguable on its merits is far less “dangerous” than many we have seen in the NHL this season (Horidchuk’s hit on Boll is one that comes to mine in the vicinity of the glass), shows no intention to in any way what would constitute a headshot at Fanelli. If Fanelli had walked away from the hit, if he’d clambered to his feet and skated off the ice at most we would have seen two minutes in the box for a possible charge and even then that might be more reflexive than deserved.
If punished someone for manslaughter like we would murder in order to make an example of them, would there not be a public outcry about the illegality and unfairness of this?

There won’t be here though. In the OHL, regardless of logic, Branch is the law.

On reflection, the most substantial of injuries Fanelli sustained in the hit were not from the hit itself, but occurring when his unprotected head slammed against the ice. Over the years I have watched many, many helmets fly off, skittering across the ice on collisions in the boards and at center ice. Players of all ages are notorious for failing to adequately tighten helmets and chin straps and I know I’ve spent my fair share of time hanging over benches yelling at them to do just that.
Maybe it’s just me that feels like that in this instance, the major issue highlighted by the events is not that of headshots but of helmet safety and just what a necessity they are. It is so scary to realize, when watching the replays, that this could have very nearly been another Don Sanderson (an event we very nearly saw play out in the NHL already this season when Tom Sestito went down in a fight, smacked his head and fell unconscious).

In a situation where everything that could go wrong went wrong, the OHL felt the need to add another layer to the punishment I’m sure Liambos is already administering himself.

Now, I’m not big fan of the shoot out for one reason and one reason only. As someone who plays goal, the fact that an entire game comes down to the individual performance of a goaltender in a one on one situation, resting an outcome on their shoulders, seems rather cruel punishment to me.

In a team sport like hockey, where the team is valued above any individual performance, it seems at odds to institute such a decider that removes that element from the game and turn the outcome into something determined by a skills contest (as Brynna puts it). Whilst Jeff thinks the whole game is a Skills contest (and that’s another enitre argument) on this point he raises a good question. If the shoot out is essentially an extension of the penalty shot, how is a penalty shot any different when it comes to  removing a team from a game and placing the pressure on the goalies shoulders?

On this point, in my oh so humble opinion I believe, the penalty shot lacks the finality aspect (except in Overtime as he pointed out, by this time I, in an incredible display of maturity, was sticking my tongue out at the screen in frustration) of a shoot out as well as being a result of the team’s actions in that moment. A penalty shot arises from the mistake of a team during a game, whether that be blowing a coverage to allow a one on one, pulling the player down and if converted to a goal, the game continues allowing the team as a unit to atone for their mistakes through further play.

Whilst the penalty shot and the shoot out attempt are essentially the same thing, identical in every way of performance, the purpose, that of punishing the offending team or determining a winner or loser are essentially different.

However, honestly? The Shootout, as I pointed out to both Brynna and Jeff, and they agreed with me on, isn’t going anywhere. It has become part of our game whether we admit it or not and as long as the NHL believe it adds attraction to the sport and makes their standings life easier it will remain. The shoot out will forever remain one of  things that whilst incredibly frustrating to the old school hockey fan is an exercise in futility to complain about.

Admittedly, you’d make a lot less of us hate it if, like we have down here in the AIHL, a 3 – 2 – 1 situation was instituted to balance out the value awarded to games that end in pure wins, SO wins and losses. That’s a whole new argument though.

P.S. My favourite hockey player is absolute money in the SO, so I don’t mind that part even.

P.S.S. Brynna hates the shoot out and would like it gone.

It’s been all over the news lately. You can’t miss it. We’re talking about Georges Laraque and the whole Octane 7.0 drama.

Whilst I fail completely as a feminist and don’t have an issue with the scantily clad women in the advert, ones whom compared to recent Dallas Stars Ice Girls videos, are almost conservatively dressed, the main drama has arisen out of a breach of Article 25.1 of the CBA.

As everyone’s now had pointed out to them (and I had pink sharpied in my copy of the CBA) not only do you need to let your  team know what you’re up to in regards to endorsements and sponsorship, but you, in accordance with 25.1 you also can’t as part of endorsement or sponsorship be assocaited with an alcoholic beverage, the exception to this being malt based beverages such as beer.

On HNIC tonight, Kelly Hrudey suggested that by not allowing players to endorse an alcoholic beverage the NHL is essentially promoting a double standard. This double standard, in his opinion, is evidence by the fact  we see arena’s plastered with beer advertising and that a beer company, Molson, even owns an NHL franchise. With all due respect Mr Hrudey as someone with far more knowledge and a far better job than myself, beer advertising is treated differently to alcohol advertising in respect of  allowences by the CBA and if the product had been a malt-based beverage as allowed by the CBA, this situation would not have arisen.

Though Laraque may not have read his contract beyond the figures of how much he was making, you would expect that every NHL agent should and would have an indepth knowledge of the CBA and how its articles and clauses affect their clients. In this instance, the issue is raised : Why did Laraque’s agent not pick up on the problem arising from such an endorsement? I, as a 20 year old Australian fan (albiet one with 3/4′s of a law degree and a rather working knowledge of the CBA), am aware of such a clause.

The main issue however, that this whole debacle brings back to the spotlight is that of the place of alcohol sponsorship in sport. Whilst the NHL already effectively limits sponsorships to that of beer companies, with beer itself being portrayed as essentially an integral and timeless part of the hockey experience (it even got its on page in A Canadian Saturday Night by Andrew Podnieks), should alcohol sponsorship in anyway be allowed, especially due to the prevalance of alcohol related violence?

I know here in Australia the issue was raised recently, and when numbers were released, it was clearly evident that without alcohol sponsorship, nearly ever single Australian sport would suffer substantially to the point where the growth and development of sports in the country would inevitably start to regress. Whilst Australian sport is much more dependent in the absence of tv rights and with smaller markets and population, it is hard to believe the effect would not be substantial. A prime example of this is the recent Molson Giver 5 Commercials. It would not be hard to speculate that the cumulative donation total from such a campaign would be enough to fund the Olympic campaigns for several  smaller winter sports.

In my opinion, junior hockey is where the real issue lies. In a league where, atleast in America, none of the athletes, and in Canada, a large portion of the athletes, are below legal drinking ages alcohol sponsorship is rampant. Whilst there is the possibility that no  financial alternative is available, particularly in the current economic climate, questions have to be raised about the wiseness of such advertising choices, particlury with the high number of minds open to this negative influence both on the ice and in the stands.

Possibly the most disturbing, and if a fault of the economic climate (due to a lack of alternative options) , saddening examples of this lies in a WHL arena, where no less than 16 ads for alcoholic beverages are present. These ads look down upon on a team of young impressionable boys who last season lost one of their own, a teammate, to alcohol poisoning just two days after his 19th birthday.

Where do we draw the line here between the business reality that without sponsorship and the money it brings that enables JR and other leagues to run and the morality argument that the promotion of alcohol through sports advertising contributes  to curren social problems caused by underage and exessive drinking as well as alcohol fueled violence?

With recent moves in the NCAA to drastically cut back or remove alcohol advertising from venues and sports broadcasts what’s stopping hockey?