Michael Smerconish ’14
There’s now one more reason to ban fighting in hockey: the death of 28-year-old Derek Boogaard. Boogaard, who last played for the New York Rangers, died last spring. His official cause of death was an overdose on painkillers, but the real, underlying cause was the National Hockey League’s continued allowance of fights on the ice. Boogaard was an “enforcer,” a player whose job is not to score goals or make plays, but to intimidate other teams through hard hits and, most important, fighting. In fact, he was more a boxer than a hockey player. The New York Times recently noted that during his time in the NHL, Boogaard scored only four goals. “He spent 1,411 minutes on the ice and 589 minutes in the penalty box,” reported The Times in a three-part chronology of Boogaard’s life and death. And even though hockey fans loved to watch him drop the gloves, as Dan Adams, a correspondent for Bleacher Report, pointed out, “They were completely unaware of the fights he lost behind the scenes.” The pressure on Boogaard from fans, players, and coaches to satisfy their craving for violence caused an ever-worsening addiction to oxycodone and other prescription medications that trainers introduced to him. He began to spend more time alone and became increasingly dependent on the narcotics. And then, around three o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon in May, Boogaard’s younger brother found him dead. That’s when researchers from Boston University were granted permission from Boogaard’s family to examine the fighter’s brain. What they discovered was utterly shocking: Boogaard had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a severe brain disorder. Doctors believe that had Boogaard not passed away, he most likely would have suffered from dementia in his middle-aged years. And he wasn’t alone. As the Vancouver Sun mentioned in a report on Boogaard, “The university examined the brains of four former NHLers, [including Boogaard]…and discovered CTE in each instance.” Moreover, “the other three players whose brains were studied by Boston University were frequent fighters.” Still, the NHL is reluctant to accept this information. Commissioner Gary Bettman recently brushed off all criticism by saying, “we’re not sure that any, based on the data we have available, is valid.” Why would the NHL not try to better protect its athletes? As Chris Nowinski, a former college athlete and now expert on concussions, noted, “They are trading money for brain cells.” Nowinski indicated that one of the real reasons why fighting still exists in the NHL today is money. Anyone who has viewed a professional hockey game knows that the reaction to fights seems at times more passionate than when goals are scored. Highlight videos often show more fighting than finesse. This explains why not long after Boogaard’s death, the NHL leaked that it would be releasing a new edition of playing cards, the “Enforcers” series. Each card has the appearance of being spattered with blood and features a picture of one of the league’s enforcers during a fight. Some will even have a “Fight-Strap” card, which contains a piece of an enforcer’s blood-soaked jersey. But it’s not just the death of one hockey player that demands that fighting be banned in hockey. The violence is incredibly unnecessary and excessive. In football, a sport that arguably contains even more contact than hockey, fighting is not permitted. Where in hockey a fight gets a player five minutes in the penalty box, The New York Times notes that “In football, as in most sports, such conduct would end in ejections, fines and suspensions.” More importantly, and as The New York Times makes clear, “Fighting is not tolerated in most hockey leagues around the world. It is not part of college hockey in the United States and Canada, nor international tournaments like the Olympics.” Besides the proof that hockey works just as well without the fights and the evidence that the NHL keeps fighting as much because of tradition as for the money, the greatest reason to ban fighting is Derek Boogaard. Although the highlight reels may show otherwise, Boogaard was rightfully called the “gentle giant” by The New York Times. He was living in search of the dream of playing professional hockey he once had as a child. Unfortunately for Boogaard, the only way into this dream was to partake in the most primitive, demanding, and harmful part of the game. But, on the other hand, Boogaard is lucky to have died before the true toll of his professional career could take hold: a lifetime of amnesia.