Fighting Words

For what its worth, I wanted to add a thought or two to the on-going debate about fighting in hockey....from my own unique perspective.

When I was interviewed by Commissioner Bettman before joining the NHL in 1996, the one question....only question, actually, was related to fighting-in-hockey (FIH). He wasn't trying to gain the benefit of my perspective, he was trying to determine which side of the debate I fell into. No, not YEAH or NAY, but rather LOGIC & SPIN vs SPITTING RAGE.

His question was simple: "Fighting in hockey - what's your thoughts?". Simple enough - but I knew that there were shallow landmines waiting for me if I were to charge strongly into a lather over the issue. Cool, calm and collected - with a pro-Bettman's -approach bias required. My answer was simple....and probably did more to get me hired than anything else in the process:

"Fighting happens in professional sports when tempers get the better of physically energized and emotionally-charged athletes. Natural, human instincts of defense and protection come to the fore - and athletes respond.

There is fighting in every professional sport. It may be of the push-and-shove variety or the cheapshot variety, but there is fighting in every professional sport. It is a human response to stimulus - and its perfectly natural.

As it pertains to fighting in hockey and in the NHL, the first thing to understand is that its a natural human reaction. Second, it happens in every professional sport. Third, some sports 'celebrate' the culture of fighting more than others....or embed fighting into its lore: imagine the bench-clearing brawls throughout the history of baseball or the long-armed boxing matches in the NBA's video room. Hockey and the NHL are like that too.

The only difference between the NHL and the other North American professional sports leagues? The crime is the same; the punishment is different. Fight in the NFL, MLB or NBA - and you're thrown out of the game. Fight in the NHL, and you're back on the ice five minutes later with one more score to settle. In the other sports, you're penalized. In the NHL, you're rewarded. The optics are terrible, and we take a beating on the optics in the media. Change the punishment rule - and you change hockey, for the better in my opinion."

I'd be thinking about that issue for a year or so, especially when working on the NHLPA's Be A Player magazine for young readers. I know why I was attracted to hockey....and the physicality and occasional fist-a-cuffs were part of the attraction. But I also know that young readers deal with bullying and other violence-related issues and I needed to tread carefully in trying to put fighting in some larger context (and, honestly, minimizing 'fighting' to more family-friendly terms as 'tussle', 'scrap', 'boys being boys', etc.).

So when I met the commissioner, I was well-prepared with well thought out positions on the subject - and influenced strongly by reader responses to Be A Player. I was connected to his youngest fan base - and I knew their language better than most.....plus I was one of the then-few Canadians who had begun to re-evaluate their previous unconditional defense of FIH.

I got the job, became the NHL's publishing director in 1996, 'drafted' a team of strong hockey publishers, launched a bunch of books including Total Hockey encyclopedia, my magnum opus/contribution to the game, and just as quickly left the league exhausted at defending its inherently biased, all-American growth strategy.

And fighting kept its place in the game.....although the position of 'fighter' had evolved to the point whereby specialization was starting to take place; guys hired simply because they were fighters, good fighters, trained fighters, professional fighters.

The job of 'professional hockey fighter' or the euphemistic 'enforcer' has become as buttoned-down as a job description. Protect your teammates at all costs. Inflict fear into your opposition. When called upon, decisively thrash your opponent, breaking bones and opening gashes....the 'crimson mask'.

The professional hockey fighter has become a specialist like the DH in baseball. The role is simple. You don't need to provide any other benefit except the ability and willingness to go out there and punch some guy in the face, repeatedly and with malice aforethought.

Interestingly, a high degree of specialization in sports has shown a distributing societal trend to lead to 'genetically-modified' athletes. We also know, from interviews conducted recently in light of the slew of enforcer deaths suffered by the NHL community, that many of these enforcers go to bed at night (and can't sleep), fearful for their physical and career survival every time they skate onto the ice to perform their duties. Big guys, little guys....just about every guy that plays the role of enforcer must first stare-down their fear if they're to stare down (and then best) their opponent. Added courage comes with many different bottles, some more lethal than others.

***

"If you eliminate fighting in hockey, what happens to all the tough guys? Aren't you denying those guys an income, a way to support their families?"

If the NHL was the UFC, you bite your tongue and hope for the best. If you're the NHL - coming off a summer in which three active (or just retired) enforcers died through to drug/alcohol overdose and/or depression-related suicides - you need to act. If there is one enforcer for every NHL team, then the NHL has just lost 10% of its enforcers over the course of one summer.

Life is a strange path. Hockey gave Wade Belak a chance to leave Saskatchewan. Fighting gave Wade Belak a chance to move forward in the game, eventually persevering until he reached the NHL. Fighting gave Wade Belak the opportunity to meet his beautiful wife and have two beautiful young daughters. Fighting scared the shit out of guys like Wade Belak. His tertiary role with the team hanging by a thread each and every game: one punch might be the last. He would stay up late at night, or have a couple of extra beers to calm him down and allow him to sleep.
Fighting played a prominent role in his battle with depression, a disease innately connected to your sense of self and your place in your world. A fighter has a tenuous hold at the best of time; a fighter compensating with alcohol or pills to calm the savage beast inside, the beast that the fans demand you become even though it isn't your true nature. The persona takes over - and becomes a spiral of fear, guilt, anger, frustration, depression....and more recently, death.

I can't help but thinking that Wade Belak might have been much better off without fighting in hockey. No, he probably never would have made it out of junior hockey.....and that's okay. He might not married his current wife or had his current kids....but I'm guessing that he would have met a wife and had wonderful kids regardless of hockey.

The one thing we do know is that Wade Belak, along with Rick Rypien and Derek Boogard, were all specialized, professional fighters. We know that all of them had some deep underlying mental trauma in some part related to their role within the team and their personal life-or-death role as a fighter. We also know that Wade Belak and his tragic line-mates are dead. And there is nothing that can be done to change that fact.

Fighting in hockey needs to be investigated as a material witness and possible prime suspect in the death of Wade Belak. The causality. The culture. The costs. There might have been a time when a good hockey fight was just the ticket to enliven a game and energize the team and its fan. Now, every time I watch players drop the gloves, I'll be thinking of Wade Belak's two young daughters....and what I could say to them to alleviate their current and future grief.

I'll say "prior to your father's death, we hockey fans were unprepared and unwilling to even discuss the impact of fighting (and specialized fighters). Because of your father's tragic passing, a sport came of age and began to have an adult conversation on a life-or-death matter....and, going forward, the likelihood of your father's tragedy repeating itself becomes less and less. I hope that helps."

Its not much, but its the least we can do for Andie and Alex Belak.

Book face time.

It seems like everything is coming out of me today, literarily-speaking. Well, almost everything. I owe the Tree Explorer - and myself - the benefit of summing up the last couple of weeks.

There have been many changes in my life in the span of a Stanley Cup Finals series. Momentum swings and panic attacks. Offensive rushes and defensive collapses. Strategy and control vs chaos and, well, more chaos. New realities and new perspectives.

Like a tsunami spawned by an underground or offshore earthquake, the waves ebb at first, presenting a seemingly tantalizing glimpse at the unseen. And then the water rushes in, relentlessly flooding and flowing, scrubbing away the detritus of human life along with the humans. Hard decisions need to be made, in an instant, as everything quickly falls away. What to keep and what gets unceremoniously tossed? If you can never return - and can only take one car load - what do you grab in the moments in between the delirium and the dilemmas?

Five days to empty your life of everything that you hold dear, an already small list that had been whittled down and distilled in the last year's inner investigation. But important things, important lives. Actually, the things really don't matter. If prompted today and given only 3 things to chose to toss into the getaway car? My laptop and my two cats. That's an easy hard decision. And its just the start of a soon-to-be-written post about the last little while in the life of a newly evolved, homo home-a-less, a new breed of wandering men and suffering spirits. Mine, I'm sure, will get written with a happy ending to await. For now, endure...and eliminate those 'things' that don't truly matter.

If you've tossed out your life's contents in the blink of a desperate yard sale, fought against the backdrop of lawnmowers screaming and landladies glaring, you'll appreciate and understand the whats and hows of the other 'attachments' in your life. You ask yourself hard questions like 'why am I doing this?', 'is it ego-driven?', 'does it truly matter in terms of making my life and my world a better place?', and my parent-enthused 'couldn't I really be doing something better with my hard-won free time?'. And that brings me to my very recent decision to 'leave' facebook for the foreseeable future.

I hope, dear Tree Explorer, that you'll have a reference point for the facebook phenomenon and will require no further explanation from me. I also trust that any current readers of this post, poor fools who've fallen into this pit and can't get out, will require no education on the power of facebook to impact modern, social society. Or so we're told. Its the new bible, the new lingua franca. Its a great tool to market, promote, pimp and sell shit. Its a great tool to spy, stalk and snoop. Its creating its own languages, currencies, behaviours and mores. Its like Pandora's box, a gift with unlimited potential that can also cause death and destruction....and once opened, difficult to impossible to return to its holder.

(smoke break....amuse yourself for a moment while I collect my thoughts and indulge my bad habit....)

WOW - THAT WAS SOME SMOKE BREAK....FIVE FUCKING DAYS WORTH!!

Now, where was I? Oh yeah, my decision to depart from, for the moment and the foreseeable future, the world of Facebook. It was a hard decision. I don't have many friends in my life - at the moment. I used to have tons of friends when I had tons of money....strange that they should both dissipate in tandem.

I also had friends that I had been prepared to fight and die for, if necessary. Friends that I've sacrificed for; friends who I've betrayed my own good senses for; friends that I've been owed favours from....and never cashed.

After my marriage ended - well, actually, beginning a few years before - most of my friends stopped being my friend. Some left the country for better prospects; some left the area to hide from their problems, worries and shame. Some friends just stopped calling once it was clear that the party had stopped and I'd stopped paying. Some friends took issue with my thoughts, my beliefs, my decisions and, quite plainly, my life in general. Some friends weren't really friends of mine at all...more like hangers-on and good-time-Charlies....ready to take your offerings and return nothing by way of reciprocity.

And, to be honest, I did make a concerted effort to step away to heal my wounds (from the marriage break-up) and strip away the layers of he-and-her to find the real me. So, friends became fewer and fewer, though the ones who remained most present in my life truly meant the most to me. Friends that I knew I could count on if the chips were ever down (not that I'd imagined that the chips would fall so far). Friends that had my back if push came to shove...and then punch came to gouge. I had a small coterie of those nearest and dearest....and while some may have construed it as anti-social, I saw it as a stepping away to gain a fresh perspective.

Relationships play an integral part of every human's life. Our parental relationships will determine whether we make it out of childhood alive. Our matrimonial relationships will determine whether we make children. Our professional relationships will determine how far we'll go, how much we'll make, and what we can achieve in our working lives.

Our friendship-based relationships? They can add incalculable value to your life - or be the pathway to your destruction. Its a coin flip....and we rarely even notice, much less actually involve ourselves in the decision-making. We leave it to chance, in spite of our parents 'your friends can determine your future' speech.

I watched my WeW (Wonderful ex-Wife, for newbies) go through five or six best friends in a ten year span. I'd go from hearing a name for the first time to seeing the WeW spending her time and money trying to help new friend sort out their life. I'd watch as WeW would take her friend's troubles upon herself, suffering mental anguish and physical exhaustion. And then I'd stop hearing the friend's name anymore, gaining only puzzling glimpses into the reason for the 'break-up'. And the cycle would continue. I think it had something to do with the 'first friendship' setting the paradigm for all future friendships. Either way, it was a painful process to watch, and I patted myself on the back for maintaining tight friendships with a core group of 5-6 buddies, guys that I'd known for a while and believed I could trust.

Turns out, I'm not that great a judge of character. Of all my friends over the past 20 years, only Big Dave remains. I've helped him a bunch of times to get out of jackpots that his then-missus got him into. But he's been there for me, too. The first time I separated from the WeW, his was the first shoulder offered, the first 'chill and relax' message that I received. Throughout the years, Big Dave has been a paragon of strength, a man who says what he means and does what he says. And, today, its his couch I'm surfing on as I try to figure out where I go from here. His answer to my request for 'sanctuary' was a simple 'no problemo'. I didn't hear that from many others.

Which brings me back, in a roundabout way, to my decision on Facebook.

Everyone knows, in this day and age, that FB is the best way to reconnect with old friends and connect with new ones. I'm still not in the mood for dating, so the whole 'use FB to find a new gal' wasn't really in my plans.

I'd watched as the WeW built a friends-list of hundreds, complete with a crazy-good schedule of events and activities. I wanted some of that. So I signed up, friended two or three people who'd been bugging me to join....and then did nothing.

Eventually, as I got some time during a sabbatical to think...and write...I started to use FB as a place to capture my random thoughts, ideas and emotions. And, by and by, some friends from high school (Malvern C.I., to be exact), friended me, and then others, and eventually I had a group of FB friends that outnumbered my 'real' friends 10-1.

And I loved it. Reconnected with old friends and old flames (or at least flames-in-fantasy). Wrote and created with reckless abandon. Read everything - and posted the best-of. Tried Farmville...and felt guilty when I left the harvest to rot....and quickly left the Farm for greener pastures.

And kept meeting new friends, and old friends, and quasi-friends, and maybe-friends, and friends-of-friends. And kept on annoying everyone with my attempts at ego-free living....letgo my ego!!

At some point, about 9 months ago, my life got a lot more complicated. My bucolic bungalow in East York was rented, paid by my deferred salary package. Deferred salary packages are great, in theory, but only for as long as the employer stays sane or isn't running his own, small-scale Ponzi scheme to subsidize his late-life crisis. Mine, unfortunately, didn't. So off to CAMH he went (ah...the old 'crazy' defence...), and suddenly I'm scrambling to hold everything together in spite of the fact I've got nothing but duct tape to hold back the torrent of bad news and IOUs.

As it turns out, its a bad time to seek a job or ask a favour. Everyone is over-stressed, over-worked and over-stimulated. I sought out my planned returned-favours....and heard nothing but 'sorry can't help'. Or heard nothing at all.

Things got worse, I got worse. I've had a condition called Addison's Disease for 30 years now. Its the same disease that JFK had, non-functioning adrenal glands. Pretty easy to manage with a couple of pills a day. Unfortunately, one of the elements produced by your adrenal glands is a hormone that helps you (but not me) to manage stress. Ironically, during crises, I'm General Stoneface, cool as a cucumber and ready to find a solution. Post-crises? Not so good....Addisonial crises follow stress crises....and my weight falls away and I start to resemble a walking skeleton.

The only solution, dear reader, is a reduction in stress. But the reverse happened: stress piled upon stress, money woes compounded by brokenheartedness over seeing friends (who had owed me big-time) turn their back on me in my hour of need.

And then everything else fell apart. And I had five days to find a home for myself and my cats.

I had disappointing results in my search. Big Dave, of course, took 12 seconds to respond. Others said "I'd have loved to help but....". The WeW took in, temporarily (her new guy is very allergic to cats), my cats until I could get them into the Humane Societies 'witness protection program' (actually, owner surrender...but those cats don't get sent to pro-euthanasia clearing houses).

Swallowed my pride and begged for help. Asked others to post my plea in hopes that some kind soul would offer up something, anything that I could take as a symbol of hope. I think four or five thousand people, some who knew me, most who didn't, saw my desperate post. And no one replied with anything more than 'sorry'. Not that I really believed FB was a real tool for building real friendships. I just figured that if FB can be used to elect a president or generate global awareness campaigns, there must be a way that it could help me in my most pressing period.

Nope.

Which got me thinking, during the moments in between throwing my life to the curb, about what is truly real, what is truly important to me. In an instant, things that I had cherished for years, beings that I had nurtured from infanthood, were removed from my view as a result of my (self-made) misfortune.

Now, being honest, perhaps it was anger or a fit of pique that made me walk away from FB. Or perhaps, it was a simple bit of mental calculus: does this 'digital friendship tool' actually help me build tangible, rock-sold relationships?

Nope.

So, like my prized collections and my dearest housemates, I realized that I could live without FB. It might be painful not getting updates on friends' conditions and contentions. I truly enjoy watching your kids in their videos and school performances. I truly do read your articles about raw food, or social injustice, or sports as a metaphor; or view the pictures of the places you have been.

It made me feel closer to you - and, hopefully, helped you feel closer to me. But, dear tree explorer, it was an allusion. Those FB friends have their own lives and their own problems. I'm someone who might clog up their FB home page with silly poems or favourite songs. I'm just another digital soul in a soulless world of click-and-paste.

So, if I don't really matter in the FB universe, and the FB universe really makes no real contribution to my actual life, why would I spend any more time on it than necessary?

Truth be told, I have gone back once or twice in the intervening weeks. I missed you guys. I missed your updates, the latent egotism and my natural voyeurism.

But its not real, its not tangible and, in the great, grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter. I still have email; I've got this blog (and another unread one, too). I've got a phone - and plenty of time for coffee talk.

Interestingly, I invited everyone of my FB friends to contact me, off FB via phone or email, to chat or plan a meet up. Anyone want to hazard a guess as to how many have contacted me?

Nope. And it's just not worth thinking about.

So, for now, any today-humans reading this will not find my FB page with updates or responses. I will check on it, or more correctly, check in on a few tender souls. And if I see there's a need for a true friend, I'll call them, email them or just walk on over.

Because, after all, that's what real friends are supposed to do.

The perfect lunch antidote to a riotous night...

I sat transfixed as young, male Vancouverites re-purposed their party-heartiness towards a less honorouable, though more predictable, mission: MAKE SOMEONE PAY FOR MY ANGER AND MY DISAPPOINTMENT.

Vancouverites (Vannies for short from now on - its waaaay tooo long a word to re-type over and over again) had made significant investments in their hockey team in the way that most ardent fans do. Money spent, sweat cast, blood splattered, passion channeled and corralled by the tens of thousands. Fueled by the most potent combustibles of all: mindless rage and good ole alcohol.

Alcohol, that alchemical substance that carries with it its own invitation, excuse and alibi. "C'mon, we'll have a few beers and have a good time." "C'mon, you can't blame her for bedding that douchebag; she was drunk.". That kind of alchemy.

Anyway, much invested, little returned, the peasants rise in anger and want to thrash those responsible. Personally, I think the Canucks should have thrown Luongo and the Twins to the mob, let them re-pay the shirkers with fists and cusses. Okay, that maybe just a bit frontier for Vancouver (perfectly okay for Dallas, though). But I understood the rage. I had a biting pain in the bottom of my stomach for the team.

They had come so close, had sacrificed so much, had the minor parts and bit players step up when needed. The big 3? Shirked their responsibilities. It would have been different if Luongo would have lost all four games 4-2, a good goalie beaten by a better one. No shame in that, really. But one of the self-believed 'world's best' replicating some of my performances? Ultimate fail; unremovable stain.

The Twins? Can I make fun of their sissiness? Could I call them the Twinkies? Soft on the outside, softer still in the middle? Well, that was a performance for the ages of coming up small.

So I had this stomach ache as I watched the fires burn and the soft boys preen and pose. One rush by the cops, finally, and it was all over but the crying. The boys in blue blew it from this perspective. Should have been a bigger, stronger presence and power projection right from the last whistle. Waiting gave the bravest drunks a chance to take another sip of liquid courage and escalate with flame and fury.

Couldn't eat breakfast this morning. I was shell-shocked. I was following the Finals with growing interest, hoping against hope that a Canadian team might just win it after 18 futile, Bettman-dominated years. Giant nope. Stunning result, really. Up 2-0, just knocked out their most clutch scorer, killed off the 5minute PP, sneak into the dressing room even at zeros. One brave period of WE ARE SPARTANS, taking abuse and refusing to retaliate, leaving the Bruins to hunt for a non-existent foe. Nope. They couldn't beat them face to face so they jumped them from behind, cowardly betrayal of the hockey code of conduct.

The heroes failed, the peasants revolted, the city burned. That's happened a few times in the history of humanity. Happening a lot right now what with the Arab Spring and the European Belt-tightening going on. And I'm without an appetite and in need of 20 more lbs.

Enter my luncheon savior, a flavour so divine as to inspire Elvis. The grilled PB&B (peanut butter and banana). Love it!! Never made it before even though my usual favourite sandwich is a toasted PB&B. The grilling part was taboo to my ritual. The ritual was stupid - and the grilled PB&B was delicious.

Just thought you might like to know, Mr. Tree Explorer. Note that hockey made Canadians so crazy that we'd riot and lose our appetites as a result. Not sure that we'll always be that way, but we were last night.

Oh yeah, and the grilled PB&B is now my new favourite sandwich. Paradigms are meant to be shattered. Nothing can be built unless the old and unuseful are removed and cleared.

Have an enjoyable day.

All fired up about hockey....

....last night's game and post-whistle shenanigans gave me a great respite from my own realities.

Nice to look away and get a laugh.....not that there was much, on the surface, to laugh about.

Vancouver Canucks blow their best chance ever to win a Stanley Cup, their best players (I'm looking at you Roberto & the Twins) failed miserably in rising to the challenge....and then the fans rioted, half-crazed out of anger for the failure....and in need of a vent.

Thus today, just for kicks, I've come up with a great new licensing idea that marries modern sports licensing with traditional rioting/celebrating. Now I have no interest in this idea....so its free and fair game for anyone with a little chutzpah.

I bet you could get a license for college football and maybe NHL (Gary needs the money to pay Phoenix's bill).

Thanks for the laugh, 'Nucks and fans....and here's my thanks!

Welcome to David's Diatribes/McConnachie's Meanderings

Hello....I must be writing.

Welcome to the first iteration of this blog, affectionately titled David's Diatribes & McConnachie's Meanderings.

I've been using Facebook - and abusing my friends - as a place to write, expound, or simply get things off my chest. But the 420 character limit isn't expansive enough for all my BS.

For the last few years, I been bugged by many, including a wonderful ex-wife who shall remain nameless, to start writing down my thoughts in one place. Now, while I'm more than happy to send a long note and/or email...and though writing has been my meal ticket and personal refuge for longer than I care to imagine, I've been very hesitant, reticent you might say, to start a blog for my own, personal purposes.

I've been traveling an spiritual explorer's path for a while now, bouncing back and forth like a kid in a candy store. I've been particularly interested in the Buddhist perspective on attachment and ego, and have been working to free myself of both. However, I've also been exploring my creative side in the same period and came against a rubicon that I did not want to cross.

By day I was a humble self-reflecting spiritualist, wandering and wondering in equal measure. By night I'd morph into Henry Miller....not exactly the embodiment of ego-free living. It's an old problem. Rumi said it best: "Man is like a donkey with angel's wings...we aspire to fly but, by our very nature, are condemned to stay earthbound. And we lament."

So, dear reader, I was caught between two poles. One said I didn't need to cultivate things that feed my ego....and yet we live in a world were ego is required simply to survive because so many others live ego to its fullest. I always asked: "Does the Dalai Lama have a blog?"

But, more recently, I've been struck by an image....a family tree and a stunted branch. Questions about this ancestors...and few answers. As a mid-aged man with no children, that branch is me. And I realized that perhaps, at some point in the future, someone with an interest in genealogy in general, and my family in particular, would start exploring that family tree and start wondering about that stunted branch.

What was he like? What did he like? What did he do? When, where, how and why?

Thus, in spite of my reticence and against the wishes of my inner hermit, I've taken the advice and started this blog.

****

What to expect? Not really sure. I like to write, have a lot of things to say, but really don't want to be buttoned down to a hard-and-fast schedule.

I won't write with the expectation that it will be read. My purpose is to help that family tree climber....and give myself some space with lots of characters to write what I feel.

Topics will be general and broad in scope; that's my preference. It will be heavy in spiritual thoughts, politics, life, news, culture and entertainment. I will try to focus on good news, good deed and making it a good read.

It will not be appropriate for children. I will not edit my thoughts except for clarity (and spelling). I want - check that, I need - a blank canvas...and this is as good as it gets.

I hope it fills the need. Heck, it already has.

Until next time...keep your chin up and your stick down.

David