Once again, hockey takes the low road

An illegal hit by Patrick Cormier in a minor league hockey game in Canada has understandably been getting a lot of traction in hockey circles the past few days. The above video is worth watching to see the response of opposing coach Patrick Roy, who certainly sounds like he's seen enough cheap shots and would like something done about it.

I've written about this before and I'll say it again: I love the fact that hockey is a physical game with rough stuff. But I also think there's far too much tolerance of hits that go over the line. The game is plenty exciting enough without people getting maimed, yet the people who run the game at the pro level seem to believe fighting and violence are the main draw.

If they thought otherwise, they would have done something long ago. But they haven't and, as a result, you get to watch the NHL Stanley Cup finals on a cable channel that specializes in bass fishing shows. And that, my friends, is fucked up.

--Steve Hymon

So much for hockey. Let's just fight!

As I've made clear before on the blog, I'm not crazy about hockey's ridiculous tolerance of fighting. I think it's hurt the sport's image more than it's helped.

That said, you have to watch this -- it's the perfect Monday morning antidote to actually working (if you want to work this morning, that's fine -- but do so at your own risk). The fight is from a game over the weekend in Russia's pro league, the KHL, that had to be canceled after less than four minutes of action due to a series of fights that resulted in so many players being thrown out of the game that there weren't enough players left to actually engage in a hockey game.

Here's a description of what happened at RussianHockeyFans.com. The English-language version of the KHL website also has a description of what happened.

--Steve Hymon