Live from New York ... it's Slap Shot 4
League's deep thinkers reclaim moral low ground with Rangers-Devils' brawl
Let's go out on a limb here and speculate that if a line brawl happened by design at the opening faceoff of a National Hockey League game in a Canadian city, the ensuing crapstorm would be more than the league could weather.
But when it occurs by mutual agreement at Madison Square Garden, mere blocks away from the commissioner's office, not only isn't it a cause for alarm, it's a marketing bonanza.
Gangs of New York, lacking only Martin Scorsese directing.
True, the league has tried to get rid of staged fights before - or at least add 10-minute misconducts to penalties for engaging in them - only to be shot down by the Players' Association out of fear that an entire class of meatheads would be out of jobs. Publicly, the NHL deplores appointment brawls.
But what will you bet that, whether there be fines or just warnings arising from Mon-day's stupidity, there are also high-ranking NHL staffers rubbing their hands together at the headlines generated by two New York-area teams - and best of all, one of them wasn't the woebegone Islanders - who so clearly hate each other. "Look at the fans. They love it!" Gary Bettman is surely saying to his top lieutenants, when six knuckle-draggers - three each from the New York Rangers and New Jersey Devils - doff the gloves as soon as the puck drops to start the game on Monday.
"We can't buy this kind of advertising. And wait ... look at that camera shot. Scraping blood off the ice. Looks like a dozen strawberry snow-cones out there. That's television magic, is what that is."
It's more than that. It's Slap Shot 4: The Empire Strikes Back. In which the battlefield has moved from the Federal League to the NHL, now that the big league's deep thinkers, after a few years of letting political correctness nearly ruin the game, have reclaimed the moral low ground.
Read more: Vancouver Sun
