Goons in the Western Hockey League


goons

Nary has a game gone by between the Portland Winterhawks and the Seattle Thunderbirds that hasn’t involved a donnybrook of some kind. This last Saturday’s game, however, involved what can only be described as the cheapest of cheap shots.

Thunderbirds forward Evan Wardley leapt at Nic Petan (that is, his skates left the ice and he was airborne) and connected with the fan favorite’s head, taking him out of the game. Wardley was pleased as punch heading to the penalty box with a big grin. Unqualified audience accounts say that Wardley stated “I did my job.” No news as of this writing whether Petan will be back for the upcoming road games after his assassination attempt.

I could spend the rest of this column accusing Seattle of regularly employing thugs and instigating most of the fights with the Winterhawks in the last five years or so, but that’s not the issue. The issue is that these “goons” are accepted as an inevitability in the WHL in the first place. This is not hockey in the 1970s; players wear helmets, there are minimum salary requirements, and the Hanson brothers of the film Slap Shot have no place in a junior league filled with NHL hopefuls.

In a world where the NHL has cracked down on the business of goonery, you would think the league featuring many players who are legal minors would have an even larger hold on this. Wardley did receive a seven-game suspension for the incident to go along with his five-minute major and game misconduct. The Montreal Canadiens prospect served a similar four-game suspension for a similar attack on Adam De Champlain last year, and as a repeat offender his sentence being increased to seven games is pretty standard. Speaking as a fan of the sport, and not just a Winterhawks supporter, I applaud this decision by the league.

The WHL also made it clear during last year’s playoffs that illegal hits, at the very least, were not tolerated when they suspended Victoria Royals’ Brandon Magee for twelve games after a series of bad checks on Petan and Brendan Leipsic. So there’s a precedent, but obviously the league cannot make a ruling on who operates as a goon or not.

Here’s a basic problem with hockey fandom, lingo, and history: at what point is a player an “enforcer” and at what point is he a “goon”? An enforcer is a hockey player, to be sure, and he is typically physically imposing and offers a level of protection for his teammates. He also may administer on-the-ice social justice, perhaps boarding an opposing player hard enough to punish him for an earlier penalty that went uncalled. An example would be, of course, the great Gordie Howe. He was an amazing player who just happened to be the scariest man on the ice at the same time, with six MVP trophies and six Art Ross trophies for lead scorer. He even originated his own form of the hat-trick: one goal, one assist, and one fight.

A goon, conversely, may be less of a hockey player and more of an MMA fighter on ice. In some cases, his only qualification may be a temper and a willingness to be locked in the sin bin every game. Tie Domi comes to mind; the Toronto Maple Leafs thug is famous for sucker punches, provoking spectators to leap into the penalty box to fight him, and having the third-highest PIM in NHL history with a whopping 3,515 minutes. Meanwhile, Domi remembered to score a total of 104 goals…in all 16 seasons of his NHL career.

So there is a distinction between the two. Enforcers are necessary, especially in such a fast-paced and diverse league as the WHL. But goons and goon-squads are a relic of the old days, and they should not be tolerated.

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Kyle Martinak
In addition to being a hockey nerd, Kyle is also is an on-camera personality for www.escapistmagazine.com and maintains various podcasts and webcomics revolving around movies, video games, and comics at his personal site, www.chaingangmedia.com.
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