Sympathy for the NHL

A few nights ago I sat comfortably watching the highly anticipated hockey game featuring the Montreal Canadiens versus the Boston Bruins when catastrophe struck. With seconds left in the second period I suddenly felt as though I was watching a scene from  the 1975 American dystopian fiction film Rollerball, as Zdeno Chara rammed Max Pacioretty's head directly and with fierce impact into a stanchion at the end of the players bench leaving him lifeless on the ice.

As surreal, shocking and disturbing as it was to watch, today I'm even more shocked to hear the league's commissioner say that it was simply a hockey play while defending his position on why no fine or suspension was handed out.

A hockey player suffered an acute concussion and broken vertebrae and came within inches of possibly losing his life on prime time television no less and regardless of the malicious and violent nature of the assault, it's acceptable because the league calls it a hockey play?

Is this what we have become as a society?

Violence in the NHL and throughout the junior ranks has risen markedly over the last decade and presently even the games best player is sidelined due to multiple concussions. Head injuries are at an all-time high while the NHL turns a blind eye and is more likely to fine or suspend players due to free speech than gratuitous violence.

So what's the rationale you may ask? Simple, we want to see violence and we're willing to pay good money to do so. A less violent game won't attract the large scale crowds or television audiences so violence is used to get our attention and has consistently proven to be a winning strategy. The MMA owes it's rapid growth and success in large part to the first rule of marketing which simply states "Give the people what they want".

So who should we be holding accountable? The NHL for trying to run a successful business and pursuing the money trail? Are we actually expecting those running the business of hockey to accept less revenues when the very nature of business is to turn bigger and bigger profits? Perhaps it's time we start holding ourselves accountable for a change.

Violence in hockey will only diminish if and when we stop buying the enhanced product and until then we can scream and condemn the NHL as loudly and as much as we like with all our angry and holier than thou attitudes while the truth remains that we are equally accountable.

Pasquale Stalteri