A Don Cherry / Darryl Sittler tracer

Today is the 36th anniversary of Darryl Sittler's 10-point night, and a few websites (like this one) are linking to a Don Cherry clip where he talks about the game.

Cherry says that the Leafs "showed no mercy" on the Bruins, and says you should never embarrass another team, because it might come back to haunt you. He says that the Leafs gave Sittler a silver tea set after the game, "for murdering us like that. I got the paper, I cut out the picture, and every time we came to Maple Leaf Gardens after that, I put this picture up ..."

"For the next three years, we never lost to the Leafs at the Gardens."

So as not to be accused of picking on Ken Dryden, I looked it up.

The presentation of the tea set was Friday, April 9, 1976, before a playoff game against the Penguins (according to the next day's Globe and Mail). The next two games in Toronto against the Bruins were actually Leaf wins:

12/09/76: Leafs 7, Bruins 5
11/27/76: Leafs 4, Bruins 2

But after that, the Leafs didn't beat the Bruins at home until the 1982-83 season:

03/26/77: Bruins 7, Leafs 5
11/19/77: Bruins 3, Leafs 1
02/15/78: Bruins 4, Leafs 2
04/08/78: Bruins 3, Leafs 1
10/28/78: Bruins 5, Leafs 3
12/05/78: Bruins 5, Leafs 1
12/27/78: Bruins 1, Leafs 1
04/04/79: Bruins 3, Leafs 3
11/17/79: Bruins 2, Leafs 0
04/02/80: Bruins 5, Leafs 2
12/27/80: Bruins 6, Leafs 3
03/11/81: Bruins 3, Leafs 3
11/21/81: Bruins 5, Leafs 3

10/27/82: Leafs 4, Bruins 1

So, if Cherry remembers the events correctly, it must be that he started posting the photo only after the game of 11/27/76. And, although it was at least five years until the Leafs won again, rather than just three, Cherry left the Bruins after the 1978-79 season, so he might just be referring to his own tenure there.

Thanks to the Hockey Summary Project for the scores.


(Note: This was cross-posted to the SIHR mailing list.)

Ken Dryden's "The Game"

Ken Dryden's book, "The Game," is considered one of the greatest ever in sports. Many times, I've heard it called "the best hockey book ever written," and that's the quote (unattributed) on the cover of my 1999 edition. The Canadian literary crowd loves it.

So, last week, I thought I'd read it. I was disappointed.

"The Game" takes place towards the end of the 1978-79 NHL season, Dryden's last before retirement. It was actually written later, based on his notes at the time, and published in 1983. It takes the form of a ten-day diary, although most of each day is taken up by Dryden's reminiscences and analyses, rather than the actual events of the particular day.

I'd argue that it's only tangentially a book about hockey. It's really a book about Ken Dryden. What he does, how he feels, what goes on in his dressing room, what he thinks of his teammates, and so forth. If you actually were hoping to learn something about hockey and how it works, there won't be much for you here ... except that you'll hear some stories about the personalities of teammates and coaches.

It doesn't talk much at all about strategy, or playmaking, or statistics, or how to win games. It deals a little more with personalities, and stories. But, mostly, it deals with Ken Dryden's feelings.

That may not sound too interesting ... except that Ken Dryden is very, very articulate. He can take the most common observation, and write paragraphs of poetry about it. Here he is talking about travelling to the Forum:

"I drive down side streets narrowed by drifts and snow-shrouded cars. Traffic is light today, and the few cars on the road move easily, unconcerned by the conditions. After the awkward caution of a winter's first snowfall, for Montreal drivers, like riding a bike, it all comes back, and slippery streets are driven as if bare and dry. I park several blocks away from the Forum and walk. The wind, gusting up Atwater Street, is bitter and cold, and, hunching over, I try to cover up, but can't. I start to jog, then run, faster as the wind bites harder. At de Maisonneuve, the light turns red but I continue across."

Well, OK, great, that's certainly a vivid picture of a windy Montreal winter's day. But the tone is a bit dramatic. It's an impressive feat of writing, and there's nothing wrong with being Shakesperean at times ... but Dryden does it *everywhere*, from the first page to the last. It started grating on me.

What would mitigate the tone, a bit, is if Dryden would talk more concretely about hockey. Sure, there are a few pages on Scotty Bowman's coaching style, and on Larry Robinson's history, and little profiles of some of the other players pop up occasionally. Finally, close to the end of the book, there's a bit of meat -- about 20 pages on the history of hockey, and how the game has suffered, and how rule changes can fix it. It's really good stuff, especially for 30 years ago, when that kind of analysis was rare. Moreover, with something more concrete to explain, Dryden allows some air to come out of the lofty prose, and it reads a lot better.

Still, even accounting for those 20 pages, the book is mostly Ken Dryden, sociologist and psychologist, observing his hockey team. It becomes a little weird because Dryden writes like he's not even there, like he's a psychiatrist floating above the dressing room taking notes.

I guess that's his thing. Ken Dryden is a lawyer; he famously took a year off from the NHL in 1973-74 to finish his law degree. He's intelligent and articulate, and it's almost like he figures there's no everyday scene that can't be made better if you try to analyze it dramatically:

"... Half-naked players move hurriedly about, laughing, shouting for tape (black or white, thick or thin), cotton, skate laces, gum, ammonia "sniffers," Q-Tips, toilet paper, and for trainers to get them faster than they can. It is the kid of unremitting noise that no one hears and everyone feels. But there is another level dialogue we can all hear. It is loud, invigorating, paced to the mood of the room, the product of wound-up bodies with wound-up minds. It's one line, a laugh, and get out of the way of the next guy -- "jock humor." It is like a "roast," the kind of intimate, indiscriminate carving that friends do to keep egos under control. Set in motion, it rebounds by word association, thought association, by "off the wall" anything association, just verbal reflex, whatever comes off your tongue, the more outrageous the better. Elections, murders, girl friends, body shapes, body parts, in the great Tonight Show / Saturday Night Live tradition, verbal slapstick dressed as worldly comment ..."

Nothing wrong with all that, but ... for a lot of the book, that's all there is. And, for all the analysis and introspection, you won't even feel like you know much abour Dryden, which is weird, because he writes a lot about himself: how he feels, and when he's more confident in net, and how he reacts to winning and losing, and his thoughts on retirement. But it's all detached, like he's trying to save you the trouble of understanding him yourself by doing the analysis for you.

There are a few occasions when he tries to say something about the game, something that a sports columnist would say, and it's almost a relief -- finally, something you can get your brain around! At one point, for instance, he talks about how he doesn't think the Canadiens are going to win this year (they eventually did, but that season was their last of four consecutive Stanley Cups). Why? Because, he says, he notices the team is complacent, spoiled by its own success, looking for the "big play" to win the game. Players "shoot from long range, safe from the punishment that goes with rebounds, deflections, screens, and goal-mouth tip-ins." Dryden says he himself cares less about winning, "content that goals appear as "good goals.""

I'm not sure I necessarily buy it 100%, but at least there's something concrete there ... you can try to figure out if it's true or false, or at least how you could study the issue. You think, hey, the guy played in the NHL for a few years, finally he's telling us what he learned!

But, that's as meaty as it gets before Dryden starts getting poetic again:

"I have felt it before in other years, but never so often and never with the same feeling, that if we lose, it will be because of us, no one else. It is not fun to feel a team break down, to find weakness where I always found strength; to discover the discipline and desire can go soft and complacent; to discover that we are not so different as we once thought; to realize that winning is the central card in a house of cards, and that without it, or with less of it, motivations that seemed pure and clear go cloudy, and personal qualities once noble and abundant turn on end; to realize that I am a part of that breakdown."

I can see why some people like this stuff, but ... well, I don't. It's just cotton candy, an exquisitely-worded paragraph that melts down to nothing when you try to figure out what it means. It's articulateness disembodied from communication, as if, when you say something beautifully and poetically enough, it doesn't matter that there's no content. Dryden produces this huge fog of articulateness that overwhelms you with feeling and the sense that something important has just been said, but ... there's not much there when you actually look.

I can't resist one more example. Here's Dryden analyzing Guy Lafleur:

"For there is a life there, and in destiny and romance there is no room for life. Painted as they are with broad brush strokes, vivid and lush, they find shape and pattern only with distance. The person who lives them is too close. He feels sweat as well as triumph. He understands what others see, but feels none of it himself."

Huh? Some people eat this stuff up, but I just don't get it.

------

Call me cynical, but I think that these things I think are weaknesses are actually why people like this book. It's about hockey, but not about hockey. It talks about "big issues" that people like to pretend they care about. There are long digressions into Quebec separatism and culture, and personal growth and emotion. It's articulate, it's educated, and it's erudite. It detaches the reader from the world of uneducated jocks, allowing them to identify and affiliate with someone they look up to. For some readers, it lets them signal to the world that *this* is the hockey they like, that they watch every Saturday night and talk about at the water cooler, the hockey that's deep and sociological and high-class.

"The Book" is a lot like a politician giving a speech, saying things so beautiful and eloquent and moving that you don't even notice that he's not saying anything concrete about what he'll do once elected. You wind up voting for the guy, not because of how he'll be able to run the country, but because you feel like you're voting for him as a person, good-looking and well-dressed and articulate.

But, no offense to Dryden ... it could be just me, that his book just isn't what I'm looking for, that the emotional stuff doesn't do anything for me. But ... whether it's me or not me, this is still not a book about hockey. It's a book about Ken Dryden, articulate hockey player. If you didn't know much about hockey before the book, you still won't know much about it after.

Of course, if you're a Montreal Canadiens fan, you'll love it ... the little stories about the team you love will be irresistible. In his chapter on Toronto, there are some of Dryden's little psychological observations on some of the Leafs of my childhood. I'm not sure if I really believe them, but I still ate them up, and I wished there were more.

------

It's kind of an aside, but the reminiscences in the book don't seem to be right. When I started writing this post, I figured I'd try to let you know which ten days Dryden's diary covered. It should have been easy: a ten-day stretch with the first game in Buffalo, and the last game against the Islanders. But the historical record doesn't jibe with Dryden's narrative. It's not just occasionally that the book is off, but almost all the way through.

This may be a little long ... if you don't like this boring "tracers" stuff, you can skip to the next section.

1. At the beginning of the book, Dryden writes "last night was the sixty-second game of my eighth season with the Montreal Canadiens." It was a game in Buffalo, where the Habs won and Dryden played well.

Here's a game log for the 1978-79 Canadiens, one I'll refer to many times in this post. From the log, it seems the 62nd game of the 1978-79 season was a home game against the Leafs, on March 1. Dryden might be referring to the February 18, game, which was a 5-2 win in Buffalo. Not that big a deal.

That game, Dryden writes, came "after a tie in Chicago and a Saturday loss at home to Minnesota." That doesn't work out. The Canadiens played two games in Chicago that year: a 4-1 loss on October 28, and a 5-3 victory on December 20. Neither of their two home games against the Black Hawks was a tie, and neither closely preceded a game in Buffalo. They did tie Chicago the year before, on Feburary 9, 1978, but that was a home game.

They did play Chicago at home on November 25, losing 8-3, making up for it with a 8-1 rout in Buffalo two games later. That's as close as I could find.

As for Minnesota, the Habs played them four times that year, winning three. The loss was a 4-3 game, but not at home, and not on a Saturday. It was on Wednesday, March 14, 1979 -- almost a month *after* the Sabres game that Dryden possibly describes.

2. That Buffalo game was on a Sunday, as it was described as "yesterday" in the "Monday" chapter. The next game occurs on "Wednesday," at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. That could have been the aforementioned 62nd game that year, on March 1, except that it doesn't match. The Habs won it 2-1, but Dryden's description is 6-4.

It can't be that he just misremembers the score, because he describes the game in detail. After tying the game, Dryden writes, the Leafs get confident that they can keep up with the powerhouse Canadiens, and the Leafs begin to take over the play. But Mark Napier and Pat Hughes score two quick goals for the Habs. The Canadiens score two more, and then the Leafs get two late. The next day, the players wonder why coach Scotty Bowman didn't give them hell for allowing those two late goals.

That adds up to 6-4. There was no 6-4 win in Toronto in 1978-79. Also, I couldn't find a 6-4 win in Toronto in either of the two prior seasons.

There was a 6-3 win on February 3. I looked that game up in the February 5 Globe and Mail. It doesn't match Dryden's description: it went 1-0 for the Leafs, then 3-1 Habs, then 3-2, Then 4-2, then 6-2, then 6-3.

3. The next day, Dryden writes, the Habs fly to Boston, where they win 3-2 after coming back in the third period from a 2-1 deficit. But, according to the 1978-79 game logs, Montreal played only two regular season games in Boston, and tied both of them, 1-1 and 3-3.

There *is* a game that fits in the *following* season, February 10, 1980. It matches the 3-2 score, and the Habs coming back from 2-1 in the third period. But, of course, it can't be that game, because Dryden was then retired (Denis Herron was in net). Also, Dryden describes Larry Robinson tying the game early in the period on a power-play goal, and Mario Tremblay potting the winner. But the third period goals were actually scored by Mark Napier and Pierre Larouche -- the first goal coming at 10:03 -- and there were no power plays after the first period.

4. The next game is in Montreal, against Detroit. Scotty Bowman says, "we got 'em back in Detroit next week." The home-and-home timeline pins it down to the game of April 4 (the return game in Detroit would have been April 8). According to the game log, Montreal won the April 4 game by a score of 4-1.

But that can't be it. During the game, Dryden notices the Leafs vs. Flyers on the out of town scoreboard. Those two teams didn't play each other on April 4. But they did on March 3, when Detroit was also visiting Montreal. So now we have two candidates.

Dryden doesn't explicitly tell us the final score, but he tells us Montreal won. The book says it was 1-0 after the first period, 2-1 after the second, and, with five minutes left in the game, Guy Lapointe scored on a shot off Mario Tremblay's right knee to make it 3-1.

Montreal lost on March 3, so it couldn't be that one. On April 4, Montreal won 4-1, which looks promising -- perhaps an empty-net goal that Dryden didn't report.

But, nope, the rest of the details don't match. The April 4 game was 1-1 after one period, and 4-1 after the second. Jacques Lemaire had a hat trick, and Steve Shutt the other goal.

5. The next game, Dryden has Montreal 7, Philadelphia 3. Flyers goalie Bernie Parent was out with an eye injury that game, the book says.

Parent did indeed suffer a career-ending eye injury in 1978-79, which occurred on February 17. But, Montreal's last game against Philadelphia was January 29. It was indeed a 7-3 score -- but Bernie Parent was the starting goalie.

6. Next is a road game against the Islanders. The book has been foreshadowing that Islanders game from the beginning -- the Islanders were challenging Montreal for number 1 in the standings, and appeared to be the Canadiens' main rivals for the Cup that year. There are several mentions of that important Islanders game coming up, including one in the first few pages, which puts it nine or ten days after the Sabres game.

As far as score, all Dryden says is that the Canadiens lost. So it could be either of Montreal's two games on Long Island: February 27, by a 7-3 score, or October 17, by 3-1. The February 27 game is nine games after the original Buffalo game, so that must be it. Still, none of the games in between are the ones Dryden describes in the book.

7. Epilogue: "In the season's final game, we needed a tie against Detroit for first place, and we lost. The Islanders, waiting to be crowned, lost to the Rangers in the playoffs. And we won again."

Finally, this time it works out. Detroit beat Montreal 1-0 in the last game, and the playoffs match Dryden's recollection.

...

So, six out of seven cases don't check out. What happened? Perhaps instead of using an actual ten days out of the season, Dryden pieced together a composite. That might actually make sense. The book has lots to say about Toronto, where Dryden grew up. It has lots to say about Boston, where he went to school and had a major playoff victory in 1972. And it has lots to say about Philadelphia, which Dryden uses as his springboard for what's wrong with hockey.

He'd have liked to have a period that included all three cities. Maybe he just constructed one out of previous games, periods, and goals that he saw.

...

8. Finally, not a score thing, but: on page 71, Dryden describes Maple Leaf Gardens:

"The enormous Sportimer is gone; an even larger, more versatile scoreboard-clock, the kind you might find in any large arena, is in its place."

But: in 1979, Gardens sported the same, iconic clock that it had since 1966. It wasn't changed until 1982 -- after Dryden's retirement, but before his book was published. Or, maybe he's referring to the original Sportimer, the one before 1966, which he would have seen as a child.

Either way, Dryden's career went from 1971 to 1979, so he would have seen the exact same clock his entire career. So what's this all about? Perhaps he saw the new clock in 1982, before the book was published, and thought he also saw it back in 1979.

------

Reading the book made me think of how different Dryden is from Don Cherry.

Cherry, in one five-minute episode of Coach's Corner, will say more of substance than Dryden says in ten pages. But Cherry uses uneducated language, dresses funny, is passionate about the things he believes, and occasionally slips into political views that tend to be less accepted by "learned" people. So Dryden gets credited with "the best hockey book ever written," and Cherry gets scorn.

Coincidentally, Cherry has books of hockey stories too (as dictated to sportswriter Al Strachan); I just finished reading his second one. The styles, as you can imagine, are different. Dryden shrouds each locker room conversation in a cloud of profundity and mood; Cherry tells it in his straight-ahead style. But Cherry has something to say, and a point to make, and the stories are actually interesting. Dryden's got a couple of good ones -- like Steve Shutt urinating into a cup, adding Coke for color, and waiting for one of his teammates to come by and drink it -- but most of them are, well, not that engrossing. Like this one:

Amid the business of getting ready for practice, there is talk of beer.

"Calisse, you see the paper?" [Rejean] Houle moans. "Beer's goin' up sixty-five cents a case. Sixty-five cents!"

His words bring a grumble of memory.

"Shit, yeah," says a mocking voice, "the only thing should go up is what they pay fifteen-goal scorers, eh, Reggie?"

There is laughter this time. Across the room, Guy Lapointe stares at the ceiling, lost in thought. Suddenly he blurts, "That's it, that's it. No more drinkin'."

There is loud laughter.

"Hey, Pointu," Steve Shutt says, "ya just gotta learn to beat the system -- drink on the road."

That one, it seems safe to say, wouldn't have made it into Cherry's book. And, as far as actual hockey content goes, Cherry has Dryden beat by a mile. I opened Cherry's book to a random page, 74, where there's a thing about fighting. It's too long to quote entirely, but here's what Cherry tells me in five paragraphs:

-- There is no rush in the world like when you fight.

-- When players get older, they get a conscience and start to hesitate, and they have a tough time. That's why you see few older players fighting.

-- Fighters' hands suffer serious damage. "You wouldn't believe the hands on Joey Kocur ... it looks like he's had a ping-pong ball implanted under each knuckle."

-- The advent of helmets and visors have made hand injuries much more common, so fighters will remove their helmets as a show of respect. "I love it when I see one guy who's have trouble getting the strap loose on his helmet, and the other guy gives him time while he gets it off. ... That's honour! I love those guys."

No exaggeration: I learned more in that half-page than probably in 50 pages of Ken Dryden. Now, I'm not saying Don Cherry is always right, or even mostly right, or that you have to agree with him, or that he's particularly eloquent. But, he does try to tell you something about hockey. He may be wrong about some of the things he believes, like Joe Morgan or Harold Reynolds, or any other commentator in any other sport. But, geez, at least he says things about hockey!

As much as people love the Ken Drydens of the world, it's the Don Cherrys who actually can teach you things. I mean, they're not always right: for every non-Dryden who believes something correctly and passionately, there'll be many other non-Drydens who believe something different, incorrectly but just as passionately. So I'm not saying that when you find a Don Cherry, you should immediately become a mindless follower. I'm just saying that if you actually want to know how things are, you should start with the Cherrys and then go with your brain. Whatever the subject, hockey or otherwise, you'll never learn anything unless you stick with the people who are seriously trying to tell you something -- not just the people who sound the best.

------

No offense to Ken Dryden. I'm not saying that he doesn't know anything about hockey, just that he chose not to tell us too much about it. He actually wrote a pretty decent book, just one that's not as much to my taste as it could have been. And Dryden is under no obligation to write the kind of book that I like to read.

Still, "The Game" is nowhere near the best hockey book ever written. It's just the most poetic.

In defense of online rudeness

A couple of weeks ago, the moderator of a certain website I frequent posted a message, reminding us commenters to respect each other. The warning wasn't random, of course; it was prompted by a discussion that got a little less civilized than normal for that site.

This kind of thing plays out all the time on thousands of different sites. But what bugs me about these "please be civil and respect each other" warnings is that they only target one general type of rudeness. I did a Google search for "message board rules etiquette," to get some examples of posted rules. A lot of them include something like this:

"Don't issue personal attacks, use profanity, or post threatening, abusive, harassing, or otherwise offensive language or images. Keep your messages appropriate and courteous at all times. Please disagree with other opinions respectfully."

Now, most of us follow this advice almost all the time. But, sometimes, we don't. When don't we? When we get really frustrated with someone. Why do we get frustrated?

Well, they might be repeatedly misrepresenting something we wrote. They might be ignoring our questions. They might be following the argument back and forth for hours, until they realize they're "losing", and change the subject. They might be obviously disingenuous, denying something they wrote in another post just days before. They might agree with what you say when it suits their argument, but change their mind as soon as it goes against them. They might be trolling for fun. They might be committing any one of a thousand logical fallacies, and refusing to be corrected.

But ... the rules don't prohibit that, do they? The rules say you can get kicked off the forum for calling someone an idiot. But you can't get kicked off for repeatedly (and perhaps deliberately) butchering your logic.

Here's a hypothetical situation I made up:

A: US citizens spend too much on foreign aid. We need to help our own instead. There are thousands out of work. I don't know why you don't see that.

B: I see that, but money spent outside the US can help a lot more people who are desperate. We can save hundreds of lives for almost nothing.

A: I don't believe you.

B: (Goes and searches the internet. Writes several paragraphs of illustration of various public health costs, and how cheap it is to save lives in Africa with cheap drugs or vitamins or something.)

A: Well, maybe, but the multinationals make too much profit when we do that.

B: (Goes and searches the internet) Here are some companies selling drugs at cost, or offering them for free, if we just pay to distribute them!

A: Yeah, whatever. And, regardless, we still spend too much. Charity is nice, but in moderation. We should spend only about half of 1% of our income on foreign aid. That's $1 out of every $200. That's my maximum.

B: Hang on, let me search the internet ... well, as it turns out, we spend only 0.1% of our income on foreign aid! So, we both agree that we could spend a little more, right?

A: I said we should spend half of that! See, we spend too much!

B: No, half of that would be 0.05%. You said 0.5%. Here, let me quote your post: "$1 out of every $200".

A: You're misquoting me. Besides, you can throw numbers at me all you want. They're just numbers. The fact is that we spend too much on foreign aid. We need to help our own instead. I don't know why you don't see that.

B: You're a dick.

What happens next? B gets in trouble for calling A a dick. But A gets off scot-free for BEING a dick. And that's a lot worse.

As far as I'm concerned, it should be A who gets kicked off the site, not B. But that'll never happen. See, B's offense was objective, and easily caught. He used the word "dick". Everyone can understand that, and you can easily make a rule out of it. "Why did B get kicked off?" "He called A a dick." "Oh, OK."

On the other hand, A's offense was subjective. It requires a judgment call from the moderator. And, there's no smoking gun. "Why did A get kicked off?" B would say, "He was a dick." But A's supporters would say, "It's because he didn't agree with B." "It's because the moderator didn't like his politics." "It's because nobody respects B's right to stand up for American workers." "It's because that website doesn't respect dissenting views."

It's hard to describe what A did wrong. The evidence is hard to describe. There's no smoking dick.

And so, the As of the world get away with it, and we just have to put up with them.

--------

I don't think that that B said anything morally objectionable. A indeed WAS a dick. Sure, it didn't *have* to be said ... but, it was true. At least in the sense that "you're a dick" can ever be said to be true.

And I would argue that B, after investing so much time and effort in moving the argument forward, earned the right to say it.

Sure, you don't want discussions degenerating into name-calling. That's no fun for anyone. But, in the appropriate context, an occasional, controlled outburst is OK.

Strained analogy: think of a discussion as a pot luck, and insults like ketchup. If you show up at a pot luck, you don't just bring a bottle of ketchup. That's rude, and tacky. But, if you bring hamburgers for everyone, and you *also* bring a bottle of ketchup ... that's perfectly OK. In fact, the hamburgers you're providing are actually enhanced by the ketchup you brought.

The rule is, if you want the right to serve ketchup at the pot luck, you have the obligation to serve the meat to go with it. And, if B has just spent the better part of an hour researching foreign aid, and hundreds of characters typing rebuttals to a poster he thought was arguing in good faith ... that's a LOT of meat. You've got to say that B has earned the right to pound the ketchup bottle a little bit.

---------

This is one of the problems we have with public discussion in general. Whether it's politicians, columnists, academics, or talking heads on TV, the unwritten code is the same. You can butcher logic all you want, and nobody will call you on it. But resort to name-calling, or other "uneducated" forms of language, and you get in trouble.

The public doesn't have the time or patience to judge what you've said. But it does understand *how* you said it!

You probably know what happened to Don Cherry a couple of weeks ago.

Over the summer, in separate incidents, three former NHL players took their own lives. They had all been "enforcers," players kept on the team for their willingness to start fights with opposing players. Speculation ensued that there was somehow a link between being an enforcer and having mental health issues. Three other former enforcers, Stu Grimson, Chris Nilan, and Jim Thomson, apparently made comments that expressed support for that hypothesis.

Don Cherry went on TV and accused Grimson, Nilan and Thomson of hypocrisy. Those guys, themselves, once chose to make a very good living with their fists, Cherry said, knowing that they'd be out of professional sports if they didn't. Now, they're trying to deny the same choice to today's players, since, with their careers long over, banning fighting would not longer cost them anything. And this, Cherry argued, was on the basis of a flimsy hypothesis with no solid evidence behind it. Hypocrites!

Seems like a legitimate argument, right? I mean, you can certainly disagree with it, but it's not that unreasonable a point to make, in the context of a controversial issue that's already attracted a lot of discussion.

But Cherry got himself in trouble. Why? Because he didn't use educated language. He didn't say it formally, the way I described it. He used less fancy words. One word, in particular: "pukes." Cherry called Grimson, Nilan, and Thomson "a bunch of pukes."

Without the word "pukes," it's just another Don Cherry TV segment. But with the word "pukes," suddenly there's outrage. There were news stories, outraged columnists, and even newspaper editorials, all of them prominently featuring the word "pukes."

In the midst of all this, Grimson threatened to sue Cherry if he didn't apologize. That was more than an idle threat: Grimson is a lawyer, and his statement threatening "further recourse" was issued by his own law firm. Cherry apologized a few days later. Grimson issued a new statement that said, OK, he wouldn't sue, but maybe the CBC should fire Cherry anyway.

Cherry got a raw deal: not just because of the content, which wasn't really any more controversial than his usual, but because of the attention he got by breaking the taboo against name-calling. "If you call somebody a name," goes the unwritten, unspoken rule, "it signals that you're uneducated and boorish, so, accordingly, we will oppose your argument exceedingly vigorously."

The media and public would do better to take some now-famous advice from MGL: "If you guys can’t separate tone from substance, that is your problem not mine. Stop being such whiners about tone.”

--------

P.S. Kind of off topic, but while I'm here ...

I don't agree with Cherry's logic that Grimson is a "puke" for speculating on the link between fighting and mental health. I think that's a perfectly reasonable thing for a former goon to wonder about.

But, I do have a problem with Stu Grimson's conduct afterwards.

I mean ... What kind of guy spends his career beating people up, then complains about a "lack of decency" because someone has the temerity to criticize his views about it? What kind of guy threatens to sue someone just because he's been called a childish name? What kind of guy speaks out on a position of public importance, and then when someone disagrees, tries to get him fired? What kind of guy would leverage his advantage -- knowing he's a lawyer and can cause all kinds of problems for Don Cherry at no cost to himself -- to extort an apology with credible threats of a lawsuit?

Maybe Don Cherry was right about Grimson, after all.

The renowned neurosurgeon vs. Don Cherry

Dr. Charles Tator is a Toronto neurosurgeon who has treated many young people for concussions and spinal injuries. He's not just a doctor: he's an active medical research scientist with an impressive resume. He's also the founder of "Think First," a program that attempts to help prevent of concussions and spinal injuries by promoting the use of safe practices and proper equipment.

On Saturday, at a conference in Regina, Dr. Tator argued that hockey is too aggressive. He said that players are taking too many hits to the head, and that concussions are more frequent than they should be. He said NHL players used to have "respect for their own safety and respect for the safety of their opponents," but not any more.

That probably wouldn't have made the news, except that Tator went on to blame Don Cherry for contributing to the problem. Cherry, a plain-spoken (and often controversial) commentator on "Hockey Night In Canada," advocates an agressive style of hockey, and has created a series of "Rock 'Em Sock 'Em" videos that prominently feature NHL fights and spectacular checks.

"I think [Cherry] is a negative influence because he promotes aggressive hockey," Tator said.

I'm on Don Cherry's side. I think Tator is out of line.

The reason is: this is not a medical question. The general effects of concussions and spinal injuries are not expert or specialized knowledge: we all understand what it means to have a concussion, or to be paralyzed. We read about these kinds of injuries in the sports pages all the time, about Tim Tebow, or Brett and Eric Lindros, or Kevin Everett, or any number of other players. We laymen understand that less aggressive play will lead to fewer injuries.

We laymen understand other parts of the issue as well. We know that we could eliminate hockey injuries completely if we eliminated hockey. If that's too extreme, we know we could eliminate a very large proportion of serious injuries by banning bodychecking, where every NHL game is as contact-free as the All-Star game. There are lots of other ways we could reduce injuries, too. We could make the puck a little softer -- that might have prevented Trent McCleary's frightening injury. We could force goalies to wear a Kevlar neck brace (which would have saved Clint Malarchuk from his near-death experience), limiting their mobility but increasing their safety.

That's not a question of medical expertise. It's a question of tradeoffs. It's a question of, how much injury are we willing to put up with while keeping the quality of game where we think it should be? Or, put another way: how much are we willing to lose in the quality of or interest in the game in order to save a certain number of injuries per year?

It would be nice if there were no tradeoff at all, and, indeed, some people might say that banning aggressive play will make the game *better*, not worse. But if that were the case, the NHL would have done it already, and there would be no controversy. There are already rules banning many dangerous practices, rules that have a very strong consensus of approval in and out of the game. In any case, even in the unlikely event that Tator believes that there is absolutely no cost to implementing his view of what should be allowed in the NHL, that's an opinion about hockey, not about medicine.

Which is my argument, in one sentence: the issue is about hockey, not about medicine. Is there any reason to believe that Dr. Tator's opinion about what's good for hockey is more valid than Don Cherry's? Absolutely not. Certainly, Dr. Tator might have expertise on what kind of hits cause what kind of injuries. But in terms of whether the tradeoff is desirable, and what the rules of hockey should be ... well, on that score, there is a strong argument to be made that Tator is biased, much more biased than Cherry.

If you're Dr. Tator, what is your experience with spinal injuries? Pretty direct. You see many, many victims of sports injuries, some of whom are very badly hurt. Every day, you see their despair and their pain, and you identify with them, and try to help them as best you can. Sometimes, there's nothing you can do. You, and the victim, constantly reflect on what could have been. If only the opposition had been a little more careful; if only the game hadn't gotten just a little too chippy in the third period; if only the players had played in a non-contact league. Then, everything would have been fine.

It's easy to understand why victims and doctors are so concerned with averting as many future injuries as possible, and why some of them, like Tator, start organizations to promote education and prevention. Every day they see the costs, intimately and emotionally. We, the fans, do not. We may feel bad for Kevin Everett and Eric Lindros, but we quickly forget and move on. Dr. Tator cannot do so quite as easily.

But what about the benefits? Dr. Tator doesn't see them nearly as much as he sees the costs. There are literally millions of North Americans who play hockey, without incident. There are millions of us who watch hockey, and many of us see aggressive play as one of the fundamental characteristics of what makes the game great. Suppose reducing body contact will save 20 injuries a year, but reduce fan interest by 5%. Do the benefits outweigh the risks? Dr. Tator will have to deal with some of the 20 injuries, but won't be one of the 5% who lose a little bit of interest in the game.

I don't play ice hockey, but I play ball hockey four times a week. Two weeks ago, one of our players got hit in the hand by a stick. His right index finger was broken in three places; he'll be unable to use it for a month. If you're a doctor, an indexfingerologist, and you see three of these broken fingers a day, wouldn't it be easy for you to get the idea that floor hockey is dangerous, and should be banned -- or at least that everyone should have to wear gloves? But we, the participants, just kept playing. We understand there's a risk of getting our finger broken, or worse, and we accept that risk. Floor hockey is fun, and the risk seems quite reasonable compared to the benefits. My life would be a lot less interesting without ball hockey -- it's my main source of recreation and exercise, and a good part of my social life. If the doctor sees only the thousand broken fingers, but not the millions of happy players who get all these benefits, while knowing about the danger and being willing to put up with it, isn't it the doctor who's seeing things the wrong way?

I recall a few years back, there was another chapter in the ongoing debate on whether motorcycle helmets should be compulsory. A doctor wrote something like: "if you don't think helmets should be mandatory, it's because you're not a doctor dealing with the victims every day. You should come to the emergency room and see how mangled these riders' heads are when their cranium hits the pavement. If you saw a few of these, you'd change your mind."

And that, frankly, is a bulls**t argument. You don't need to see the blood and guts to understand that the accident killed the victim, or turned him into a vegetable. You don't need to have a medical degree. You need to carefully weigh the risks and benefits, and come up with an argument. You need to study the issue. If helmets saved one life a year, it wouldn't be worth it: you could take all the money spent on helmets, use it to buy medical tests, and probably save hundreds of lives. On the other hand, if helmets saved a hundred thousand people a year, then, yeah, there's an argument for requiring them. But "blood and guts are disgusting and tragic, therefore helmets should be banned," is not a reasonable argument. It's an argument from a misguided person who thinks the fact that he treats the victims gives him a special moral insight into what risks society should tolerate and what risks it shouldn't.

To his credit, Dr. Tator doesn't make such an argument, but the idea is roughly the same. The argument has to be one of costs vs. benefits, and Dr. Tator's involvement with the victims, no matter how expert, charitable, and concerned, makes him likely to be *more* biased and *less* credibile in analyzing the issue. Of course, he could make an argument, with numbers and logic, to show us that he has used valid analysis to overcome the possibility of bias. If he's done that (and the press didn't report that he did), I'm absolutely willing to look at it.

Now, you could argue that for the NHL, the fans are biased just as much, in the other direction. After all, in ball hockey, the injury is mine. In the NHL, the injury is a stranger's. As a fan, I get all the benefits, the entertainment value of fights and bodychecks, and it's the players who pay the price. If I'm willing to criticize the doctor for overemphasizing the costs, shouldn't I also criticize myself for *underestimating* the cost?

Well, yes and no. From an economic standpoint, we fans *are* bearing the costs: more enthusiastic fans creates more revenue for the league, which means the players get paid more, and therefore compensated for the risks inherent in the kind of hockey we demand. On the other hand, Dr. Tator doesn't have to pay anything for his demand that hockey get less aggressive. He gets all the benefits, in terms of having to give bad news to fewer victims of spinal injuries, but pays a very small portion of the costs, being only one hockey fan out of millions (and perhaps not liking aggressive play in the first place).

But never mind that argument. Suppose we ignore that we fans are compensating the players for their preference, and we assume that we are so insulated from the reality of career-ending injuries that we're too biased against safety, and are demanding more than the "optimal" amount of hockey aggressiveness. Then we're biased one way, and Dr. Tator is biased the other way.

So it seems like, so far, everyone is biased. What we need is an opinion from someone not so far from the fans and the game, and someone not so far from the victims of injury. Someone who is intimately familiar with both the costs and the benefits.

That's Don Cherry, isn't it? Cherry may have strong (and sometimes controversial) political views, he is often politically incorrect, and it seems to me that he's disliked by many who don't like his blunt style and uneducated way of speaking. But in my (admittedly untested) opinion, he is one of the foremost experts on NHL hockey anywhere. He has a huge fan following, and, more importantly, inordinate respect from the players. He is not in favor of recklessness on the ice; he's spoken out many times against aspects of hockey he thinks are dangerous. For years, he's waged a campaign in favor of "no-touch" icing. Every year, he shows an video, quite unpleasant to watch, of injuries incurred by players chasing each other after an iced puck, and rants against the stupidity of the league for not changing the rule. He's been active in injury prevention in youth hockey, promoting the "STOP" program to help prevent hits from behind. I don't follow Cherry as much as some others, but I have never heard him condone dangerous play.

Cherry has been an NHL coach, and he's active in the league's social circles. He's certainly seen many of his player friends and acquaintances felled by injury, unlike most of us fans, which means that, like Dr. Tator, he has first-hand experience with the costs of aggressive play. But he knows the game, and he knows, intimately, the risks involved. He intuitively knows what types of "aggressive" play are risky, and which ones are not. He has opinions, probably as good as anyone's, with credentials as good as anyone's, on what types of aggression are good for the game, and which ones are not.

Intuition is no substitute for a well-formed argument, backed by evidence and logical argument and measurement of costs and benefits and risks. But if you asked me whose gut argument I would want to hear first, it would be Don Cherry's. It doesn't matter if you're one of Canada's foremost experts in spinal injury treatment and prevention, because the question is, what's the proper balance between aggressiveness and risk? That's a question of opinion, not of science.

Dr. Tator may well be right, that hockey is too aggressive and therefore too dangerous. But until he comes up with numbers and arguments and a way to measure the tradeoffs, I am less inclined, not more, to take his word for it simply on account of his profession.