Violence In Hockey

Last week, there were two separate NHL games in which multiple fights resulted in almost record-breaking amounts of penalty minutes called and cheap shots taken.

This weekend, the Pittsburgh Penguins' best player of all time (and current minority owner) Mario Lemieux came out and said the suspensions the league handed out were ''a travesty'', and that the league didn't show its seriousness in eradicating such behaviour. He added that if this was the direction the league was headed in, he'd rather no longer be involved with it. This, after more than a decade of fighting for ways to get a new amphitheater built in Pittsburgh and the Pens finally moving into it a few months ago.

Yesterday, Detroit Red Wings legend and current Tampa Bay Lightning general manager Steve Yzerman held a phone conference in which he said Super Mario should actually get more involved with the league, not less, saying:

I think Mario is one of the most well-respected, intelligent people in the game. I would encourage him (and) I think we should all encourage him to get more involved with the league because he has a lot to offer.

In the best of worlds, this would be a Coup against current league commissioner Gary Bettman, whose reign has been marred by terrible decisions (over-aggressive expansion, two lock-outs, threatening to not let his players participate in the next Olympics) that have made a handful of owners a lot of money but has seen a majority of its ownership change more often than there actually are teams in the league since his arrival, losing such conglomerates as Disney and Blockbuster as parent companies, after spending years trying to convince the public they were right for the task.

Of course, the league - via Bettman lapdog/henchman Bill Daly - has gone out of its way to discredit Lemieux, saying he rarely even participates in Governors' Meetings, where team owners and general managers decide on the rules overseeing the game. Which means that in the past 10 months, the league has discredited both Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky (who is one of only two creditors, as part-owners of the Phoenix Coyotes, that didn't get compensated when the team was bought out of bankruptcy by the league itself), the two best players of Bettman's era - and arguably two of the five best players of all time no matter where you rank them.

Just for that, I do hope this is a coup.

But it has to be said that both Lemieux and Yzerman, in this case, should look in their own backyards before asking the league to up its credibility: Lemieux employs the league's most-renowned diver in Sidney Crosby and one of its dirtiest players in Matt Cooke, while Tampa has Steve Downie in its line-up, a guy who once beat his own teammate up in practice for refusing to get hazed while serving as captain of his team... the team? Team Canada, for the World Juniors. There's an expression about living in glass houses...