The Best American Sports Writing 2011

by Jane Leavy

  I wasn't sure hockey fighting could be taught, at least, not in any kind of codified way. Most fights last less than a minute, and outcomes appear random. Enforcers are just as likely to land punches as they are to be punched; to grab jerseys but get separated by refs before the fight can begin; to start throwing punches only to lose balance and fall to the ice.

  I had to see for myself. When I called Trevor and asked to enroll in kiddie fight camp, he said no. This was not because I'm about six-foot-three and weigh 210 pounds. Trevor just thought I'd bring more negative press attention to his camp.

  There had been plenty. Sports Illustrated had called it "goon school"; an ESPN columnist dismissed it as "completely ridiculous"; a Minneapolis Star Tribune column claimed the camp was "indoctrinating a fresh generation of kids into [a] warped mindset." A spokesman for Hockey Canada, the organization that oversees all of Canada's amateur hockey leagues, condemned it on the nation's largest TV news broadcast. The white-hot media reaction had already cost Trevor his insurance. His provider had learned that kids were punching other kids and dropped him. Trevor simply switched to another company and kept on going.

  Mostly, Trevor said no because he saw my U.S. area code on his call display. "I don't need more American media attention," he said. I knew that some Canadians use "American" as a slur and explained that I grew up in Alberta playing Canada's game. Trevor warmed up, but not much. So I told him that I play hockey with a certain dead man's gloves.

  That dead man was former Toronto Maple Leaf enforcer John "Rambo" Kordic, one of the most feared goons in NHL his tory. Kordic died in 1992 from respiratory failure. The autopsy found a stew of steroids and cocaine in his blood. A year before his death, Kordic gave a pair of his gloves to my uncle Earl, who was the Leafs' doctor at the time, and Earl gave them to me. I remember the raw disbelief. Kordic had actually touched these things, had worn them, played in them, and very likely dropped them. It took me a year to get over it and actually use them, though I later decided that playing with Kordic's gloves was disrespectful. Now they sit inside a sealed Rubbermaid container in the attic.

  Mentioning the Kordic relic was a desperate move. I did it to convince Trevor that I understood hockey violence, its history, its purpose, and its unspoken rules.

  It worked. Trevor invited me to the camp's July session in Saskatchewan, where I would be treated like a regular camper. I'd get in on all the drills and instruction sessions and have access to interview any teachers, students, or parents willing to talk to me. Trevor was vague about whether I'd be fighting children or not. I didn't care. I was in.

  As we wrapped up the call, discussing the logistics of attending the camp, I asked Trevor how I should transport my fragile, $200 carbon-fiber hockey sticks on an airplane.

  "Don't bother," he said. "We don't even bring pucks on the ice."

  The Puckmasters rink is housed inside a white cinder-block building in Regina, a small city surrounded by a rural area that approximates Kansas only with more winter and less Christ. Often mispronounced by outsiders, "Regina" rhymes with what no city should. Far from the glittering buildings of downtown, Puckmasters' rink sits in an industrial strip mall between the backside of a Staples and across from Don's Auto Repair & Air Conditioning. The day I arrived, Puckmasters' gravel parking lot was empty except for an abandoned Suzuki Esteem, which someone had cut in half and left to rot on a wooden palette.

  Trevor was late. The door to Puckmasters was locked. I waited outside in the July heat while children disgorged from their parents' Cavaliers and Windstars. Some were prepubescent kids already wearing full gear besides the helmets and skates that they carried with them, and some were voice-cracking teenagers in long T-shirts who were just shy of six feet tall. After about an hour, Todd Holt, Trevor's business partner, arrived and let us in. Todd, a short, barrel-chested guy in his mid-thirties, was an eighth-round NHL draft pick in 1993. He never made it to the NHL but bears a striking resemblance to his first cousin, Theoren Fleury, the former NHL all-star. Todd left me to explore the building.

  The first thing I noticed was that there is no ice at Puckmasters, just a half-sized rink made from EZ Glide, a high-density plastic surface that behaves like ice, only skates don't glide as far. Each stride feels like 10. Without ice or a building air-conditioner, the room temperature felt close to 80.

  In a corner next to the plastic rink, a whiteboard had been hung with two notes written in erasable marker. The first read, "Wallsit record Nolan & Cody 25:30," in neat handwriting; the other, scrawled in a child's writing, declared that "Kyle Sucks." Life-size vinyl posters of Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin had been stuck to the walls. Twelve more vinyl cutouts of encouraging words were stuck to the far wall above the fake ice: Great! Super! Scintillating! Yes! Fantastic! Excellent! Dynamite! Awesome! Wow! Great job! Superb! Outstanding! A single hole pocked the drywall below the words. Inside was a puck.

  I left the rink room and walked toward Trevor's office in the lobby, where I met Brad Herauf, a neckless 26-year-old player with wide-set eyes and a dark buzz cut, relaxing on a couch. At the time, Brad, a guest instructor at the camp, was playing center for the Florida Everblades in the ECHL; he'd later move on to the Albany River Rats of the American Hockey League. He looked small for pro hockey but he has a solid reputation as a fighter, totaling 785 penalty minutes over his first three seasons in the ECHL. He had a deep midsummer's tan from three months off the ice. I made some small talk about the ECHL but he interrupted me. He'd been briefed.

  "We're not talkin' if you're here to be negative," he said, air-poking his index finger at my chest. Brad relaxed when I told him that I was just here to learn, play hockey, and understand the culture. "Okay, good," said Brad, and he began explaining what it's like to play pro hockey before an indifferent audience in the tropics.

  Trevor finally arrived. He was in his mid-twenties, tall and fit, with a cherubic face. He was dressed in red plaid shorts and a horizontally striped shirt, a set of dueling patterns that gave him the power to induce nausea in others when he moved. On his head was a Hockey Night in Canada ball cap with Oakley sunglasses perched above the brim.

  After exchanging hellos, he walked us to a counter at the entrance while a few more kids bustled through the door. Trevor launched into a soliloquy that was bookended with "we're striving to be the best" and "this is a classy school." Eventually his spiel found its rhythm, and Trevor properly explained himself. "If you're a high-end prospect at a [tryout], guys are out to get you. And if you lose a fight, you lose confidence. You could perform badly at the camp. Then someone on the ice owns you, maybe for the camp, maybe for your career. Wait ... have you met your fighting partner yet?" he asked.

  I hadn't. Trevor looked past the narrow-shouldered kids loitering in the hall, awkwardly waiting for the school to begin. He pointed at a six-foot-four, 220-pound eugenics experiment wearing a smirk.

  "That's Dominic. He's only 16. You're fighting him."

  Trevor greeted a few of the latecomers at the entrance and ushered me into a small conference room next to his office. In the room, a few copies of The Hockey News were stacked neatly on a long table with foldable legs. A 14-inch television perched on a high shelf. Trevor turned it on and slid a home-burned DVD into the machine. He folded his arms and told me to watch. Onscreen was a shaky homemade highlight reel of Derek Parker, a veteran of three seasons in Quebec's Ligue Nord-Américaine de Hockey, picking fights and finishing them. In 2006, Derek set a league record with 508 penalty minutes in 51 games. After flirting with retirement to train for the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Parker returned to hockey and racked up 145 penalty minutes in 35 games for the IHL's Dayton Gems.

  "He's the other guest instructor tonight," said Trevor, who began explaining the three-part structure to the clinic: video analysis, fight theory, and on-ice instruction. He left the room to let me study the clips by myself.

  Derek arrived in person a few minutes later and sat down at the table. His nose began near the equator of h
is forehead and plumbed a lazy arc to the southeast. He too had a buzz cut and stood about six feet tall, his wide shoulders housed under a turquoise track jacket with Muay Thai printed on the back. We exchanged hellos, and he immediately began scrawling coaching notes, ignoring both the parents who'd walked into the room and his own highlight reel playing behind him.

  Onscreen, Derek and his team skated in a pregame warm-up pattern, arcing a long circle that started behind the goal and notched its widest diameter near center ice. The other team skated the same circular path on the other side. On one pass, Derek lightly whacked one of his opponents on his shin pads with his stick, just a tap, and it sparked a scrum. While the other players grabbed jerseys and exchanged face-washes, Derek and his opponent sneaked out of the fray and skated to center ice, purely for the showmanship of fighting at center ring. They dropped the mitts and removed helmets without taking their eyes off each other. Derek brought his fists up to his temples, weaving each hand as though it orbited a tiny, invisible planet. After 10 seconds of staring each other down, Derek reached for his opponent's right shoulder with his left hand and then threw a right at the other player's left eye. The blow connected, and Derek unleashed three more punches, missing two. Derek's opponent staggered and fell to one knee, but Derek kept punching until the referees intervened. The crowd went nuts.

  Derek looked up from the table then, seeming for the first time to notice the parents, whose facial expressions were stuck somewhere between awe and horror. There was a palpable awareness that this man was going to spend the next three hours with their children. The room was quiet.

  A few minutes later, Derek excused himself and left the room. I took the opportunity to ask some of the parents why they had taken their children here. Duke Prendinchuk, father of 13-year-old Tyson, told me his son had played tier 1 hockey, the highest level for his age, his whole life. Tyson's participation tonight was "more my idea than his." He was in a transition year between Pee Wee (ages 12 and 13) and Bantam (ages 14 and 15) and it was time to "toughen up." "He's gotten into fights in the last couple of years," Prendinchuk said. "It's for self-protection because people come at him. That's part of the game. He's in games where he gets hacked and one thing leads to another."

  One of the mothers, a pretty blonde wearing irony-free acid-washed jeans, wouldn't talk because she was worried the camp might be shut down if I wrote about it. She seemed legitimately afraid for its future. She turned her attention back to the fight reel and resumed ignoring me.

  Trevor walked in. I asked him when the video analysis session would officially begin. "You just had it," he said. "Go get changed into your hockey gear with the kids."

  Derek and Brad stood in the middle of the dressing room, surrounded by 13 kids and me. We were all wearing hockey pads and sat on a narrow bench that wound around the room. Tall wooden cubbies with hooks were attached to the wall above the bench, a feature typically found in dressing rooms of elite teams. Trevor told me that it was flourish he had insisted upon because he believed it settled players into an elite frame of mind before they went out to skate.

  Trevor introduced Brad, who was in full hockey equipment. Then he introduced Derek, who, for reasons clear only to him, was wearing a teal-colored martial arts gi, only one made of terrycloth. Tonight, the terror of the Quebec league would be teaching us to fight in his bathrobe.

  "These guys are true experts," said Trevor. "Derek, how many fights would you have in each season? What, about one every other game or so?"

  "No. I'd say more than that."

  "Like ... one fight a game?"

  "No. About four."

  "So you'd spread them out during the game?"

  "No. I'd fight all four in the first period."

  "So you'd spread them out ... in the period?"

  "No. I'd fight them all during the first minute, though sometimes during the warm-up."

  Derek then went around the room and asked each kid why he came to the camp. Most of the kids said they were here to learn how to protect themselves, but one kid, a skinny teenager with a short mop of blond hair, said he had come "to learn how to be a complete player." Derek commended him on this answer.

  "That's right. Fighting pumps up your team and gets you in the game," he said. "It's about doing what it takes to win though it's never about hate." Derek then added what he considered the final proof: he and Brad had twice fought during junior hockey and yet here they were, kibitzing. The kids seemed impressed.

  The lecture then shifted from motivation to fight theory and rules of engagement. "The number one rule with hockey fighting," Derek said, then pausing for effect, "is don't get hit." Taking a bare-knuckle punch is an unacceptable risk. "I'd rather have a fight where neither of us lands any," Derek added. "In my mind, you still win. You've sent a message."

  Though the video portion of fight camp was a disaster and possibly optional to attend, the mood had shifted inside the dressing room. The kids were rapt. All of them watched Derek, except for the eugenics experiment, who was sneaking evil looks at me.

  I was being sized up.

  Fighting will never return to the levels set during the nightly benchclearing shitstorms of the 1970s. Still, it will never go away, and for a number of reasons. For starters, hockey fights win hockey games. Unlike fights in football (silly, considering the helmets stay on) or baseball (born of errant pitches) or basketball (rare, but fight-to-injure situations), hockey fights are strategic. Success hinges on a team's will and the liveliness of the crowd. If the home team is down by two goals in its own rink, the fans have essentially paid for a $200 nap. At this point, a coach will assign his designated pugilist to fight, or the fighter will take his own initiative. In theory, the fight should shake the crowd from its slumber and get things loud. The home team will then convert this fan energy into momentum and, ideally, score. In 2008, the Detroit Red Wings fought more than they did the two previous seasons combined and won the Stanley Cup. The year before, the Cup went to the Anaheim Ducks, who had led the league in fighting.

  This wasn't supposed to happen. Years earlier, the NHL had attempted to curb violence with the so-called Instigator Rule. Adopted for the 1993 season, the rule adds two extra penalty minutes to the player who starts a fight. The penalty initially dissuaded teams from fighting, but it since has fallen out of favor with referees. In 2007, only 18 instigator penalties were issued—one in 18 fights—while the 2008 season spawned 339 more fights than the previous year.

  Moreover, fighting sells tickets. Never mind that I went to college and know which one is the salad fork: when a fight breaks out, I'm on my feet and high-fiving strangers. And I'm aware that fighting makes hockey seem as legitimate a sport as American Gladiators. I know that fighting is a zero-sum game for global audience development; that it appeals only to the passionate few while marginalizing the sport to the masses; that fighting has killed a player and injured countless others; that the Montessori/Whole Foods set would sooner let their children watch Glenn Beck before teaching them these values. I and my hockey-loving tribe are supposed to know better. Because there isn't a hockey fan on earth who hasn't been subjected to the dog-pile journalism devoted to the social and physical pathologies associated with hockey brawls. But that's not for us. We dismiss the hysterical nanny-state politics because we recognize excitement when we see it. And more important, we understand that hockey is a momentum game. You have it, you win. And short of scoring a goal, fighting is the surest way to gain momentum. We know that it wins games and Cups. So we tolerate fighting. Love it, even. It's a big part of why many of us go to the rink. In January 2009, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, who sought to complete the Disneyfication of hockey into good, clean family fun, admitted it for the first time. "I believe that most of our fans enjoy that aspect of the game ... It is a part of the game," he said. Paul Kelly, formerly the head of the NHL players union, agreed, stating in a February 2009 television interview that fighting actually mitigated violence in the game and that star players needed protect
ion. Kelly told the Versus network that Gretzky would have played "several hundred" fewer games without Dave Semenko's help. No stars, no face of the game, no product to sell.

  Two recent studies support Bettman's and Kelly's assertions that fans like what they see. In a 2009 survey, 63 percent of Canadian fans opposed motions to curb fighting while another survey found that 70 percent of Canadians who iden tified themselves as "passionate" hockey fans said they supported it. Hockey broadcasts, most notably CBC's Hockey Night in Canada, which attracts some 1.8 million viewers out of 30 million Canadians during the playoffs, have embraced hockey fighting. Hockey Night features two theme songs prior to the game, one of which is Elton John's "Saturday Night's Alright (for Fighting)," albeit performed by Nickelback to circumvent either royalties, fey association, or both. The song is set to clips of recent fights and especially violent hits. CBC is hardly alone in its fight treatment. Thirty years ago, broadcasters cut to commercial during fights; today, TV crews give every fight play-by-play commentary, reverse angles, and the gratuitous slow-mo treatment.

  All of which has fortified the role of fighters in the culture. Derek Boogaard, the Minnesota Wild's designated fighter and the guest instructor at Lakness's first fight camp, has never scored more than six points in an entire season. Yet his replica jersey used to outsell all of his teammates' shirts but one. This fight culture is even stronger in the minors. It has become ironic and cult, and moved far beyond the decades-old shadow of Paul Newman's Charlestown Chiefs in Slapshot. In August 2005, organizers held a hockey fight tournament in Prince George, British Columbia, without pucks, sticks, or teams. Most competitors were brawlers from the minors. The tournament was attended by 2,000 locals and filmed by a Canadian documentary crew. Four fights broke out in the bleachers.