Sometimes professional sports—hockey included—can be downright stupid. Okay, maybe that’s a bit harsh. In the spirit of Christmas, let’s call it silly instead.
Soccer has its endless diving, where burly, muscular men roll around feigning agony after barely—or sometimes never—being touched. Football players feel compelled to trash talk non-stop, play after play. Baseball players clear the benches to engage in push-and-shove theatre after an intentional—or conveniently “accidental”—beanball. And basketball players seem astonished every time a seven-footer with the wingspan of a wandering albatross slams the ball into an undefended net.
Which brings us to hockey and the “unwritten code.” Or should we say codes, as it seems in the NHL there are many.
For example, when players drop their gloves and proceed to rearrange each other’s facial features while standing toe-to-toe, it’s apparently okay. If, however, they should fall to the ice, the punches must stop immediately. Apparently, pummelling someone vertically is noble, but doing so horizontally is taboo.
Or consider this one: arriving at the opposing net at top speed, and hitting the brakes, which sprays snow towards a rival goalie, is a real no-no. After all, getting hit with ice shavings is much more dangerous than blocking a rock-hard rubber disc travelling at 100 mph.
Coaches have their own code to follow. When winning by a large margin and granted a power-play opportunity, a coach must not send out his top power-play unit to increase the lead. After all, it’s not the opponent’s fault that they played horribly all night long. Oh, wait a minute… yes, it is.
A newer addition to the code insists that if a player throws a perfectly clean, legal bodycheck, a fight must immediately follow. Because who wants players actually playing by the rules?
And then there’s this equally mind-boggling ritual—probably in place because most athletes prefer to follow the leader rather than actually think: when a player scores a goal, he must proceed to his team’s bench area, as the remaining on-ice skaters follow close behind in single file, like a family of ducks crossing the road, to hand out high-fives to each and every teammate.
But the most laughable of hockey codes resurfaced this week when the code-breaking Detroit Red Wings invaded Madison Square Garden to do battle with the underachieving New York Rangers. The code states:
You may drop your gloves and repeatedly throw haymaker punches designed to injure and humiliate. You may disregard the rarely called charging rule and crush an opponent into the boards from behind, risking paralysis. You may cross-check a player in the lower back repeatedly if he has the audacity to stray near your goal crease. But you should never—and we mean never, under any circumstances, for any reason—shoot the puck into a team’s empty net after a stoppage in play. Good heavens, man! Are you out of your mind?
Detroit’s Mason Appleton violated this sacred tradition as the final buzzer buzzed (what else would a buzzer do?) sealing a 3–2 Red Wings win. Rangers goalie Jonathan Quick wasted no time going after Appleton—with all players on both teams on the ice. While the large testosterone-filled gathering didn’t evolve into a full Pier Six brawl, it could have.
Said Quick: “The horn goes, a couple seconds pass, Appleton shoots it in the net. I don’t know why they were surprised. It’s usually the response when something like that happens. So, boys jumped in and did the right thing.”
Which makes us wonder: were Quick and the Rangers concerned about damage to the puck? The empty net? Their egos? More likely, they reacted because the code told them to. And the beauty of the code is that it requires no thinking—something many players excel at.
But c’mon, as already stated, this is just plain silly. No, check that thought—notice how we are thinking this through—we’re going back to our original thought, Christmas spirit be damned:
This is just plain stupid. Really, really stupid.
