Hockey brawls are like my baby

Add another first to Sports Baby's long list of accomplishments: first fever.

I'm happy to say that his Mama and I got through it without crashing through the front door of Lions Gate Hospital and screaming "My baby is one fire! Get all of your doctors to stop saving these losers and come help us now!"

Instead I got to make a 7-11 run at 3 a.m. to pick up some cherry-flavoured baby Tylenol (FYI: delicious. Whatever my baby doesn't finish I'm going to chug and then go crazy like Rod and Todd on Pixy Stix). I was delighted to see two drunk-up hoochies in 7-11, their shiny boots towering them over the little store clerk. As they strutted around, their flirting and drunk laughs bringing the clerk as close to a sexual encounter as he's been since a chubby EMT gave him mouth-to-mouth after a 1997 robbery, I thought to myself, "wow, hookers!"

Then I realized that they're not hookers, this is what people do on Thursday nights when they don't have to worry about their baby dying or their wife getting upset with them because they're slow-dancing a sloppy make-out with a stranger in the middle of the dance floor long after the DJ has started playing up-tempo tracks again. Ah, the memories. I almost broke down and bought an undergrad-memorial corn dog from 7-11.

Back at home my baby eventually roundhouse kicked his fever in the face, beating it away with a little help from more cowbell.

These days the NHL has a fever too — fight fever. The League is going retro these days with a slew of 1970's style line-brawls breaking out.

The Penguins and Islanders did it two games in the last two weeks with both games punctuated, strangely enough, by fights involving backup Penguins goalie Brent Johnson. In the first game Johnson shared a laugh with fellow goalie Rick DiPietro before breaking DiPietro's face with one punch. In the rematch Johnson was challenged to a fight by oddly-spelled no-namer Micheal Haley in a rare skater vs. goalie bout in a game that featured 346 penalty minutes and 10 player ejections.

Sandwiched in-between those games was a fight-filled contest between old rivals Montreal and Boston that featured a much tamer goalie fight between Carey Price and Tim Thomas, two all-stars who know better than to actually punch each other. Boston also threw down against the Dallas Stars recently in a game that featured three fights in the first four seconds. And then there was that brawl where Brick killed a guy. What's next NHL? Lions? Land mines? A friggin' Cyclops?

It's such an odd quirk of the sport. I'm not sure how I'm going to explain to my kid when he is four years old that it's not OK to punch people unless they break into your house, call your Mom a ho, or are wearing skates. Whatever, I'll figure it out.

For media watchers it's made for an interesting week.

Globe and Mail columnist Roy MacGregor, referring more to concussions than fighting, highlighted a growing gap between mainstream media writers who think the league has reached cartoon-level violence and are calling for stiffer penalties to protect players on one side and the Hockey Night in Canada analysts, particularly Don Cherry and Mike Milbury, who revel in the game's violence on the other side. MacGregor's article went so far as to equate HNIC to Fox News for the boisterous, old-school rantings of its resident blowhards.

How did Cherry respond to this wild fortnight of fisticuffs in tonight's edition of his weekly sermon, Coach's Corner? He didn't, instead using the time to proudly show a couple of fights between teenaged junior players ("They're good boys," he gushed) before joining Ron MacLean in a 1930's Yukon reenactment of the fake orgasm scene from When Harry Met Sally. At least I think that's what it was. Although for most of it I had the sound off. And my eyes closed. Anyway, it was weird. (Here's the video. The baffling display begins at the 4:30 mark. Only watch it if you don't have better things to do with four minutes of your life — things like practicing villainous eyebrow arches in the mirror or dyeing your cat's fur orange with Cheetos goo.)

Anyway, I'm not sure if the NHL has any interest in cooling down their teams' recent fight fetish. If they did it would take a lot more than a cowbell. I'm thinking more like a gong.


Photo Justin K. Aller/Getty Images
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