Tag: Don Cherry

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Boogaard Boogie

After Derek Boogaard died, from a combination of prescription pills and alcohol, it appears, the Minnesota Wild held a tribute to their former enforcer showing video clips from his career, including all three goals that he scored over seven years. It showed him interacting with fans and children, checking opponents hard, skating, shooting.

The tribute video–five minutes long– didn’t show a single fight.

Didn’t Don Cherry have a say in the choice of clips to show? In the context of what happened to Bob Probert Rick Rypien, Derek Boogaard and Wade Belak, Cherry’s comments earlier this season are obscene.

It has become more and more evident with research that the brain damage suffered by many NHL “enforcers” is not the accidental result of the occasional bad hit: it is endemic to the role itself, to the battering that all enforcers endure on a regular basis. It is not a matter of if but when brain damage occurs, and once it occurs it spreads, and once it spreads it cannot be stopped or rescinded. It clots the brain cells, disconnects synapses, tears at the very fabric of the tissue. It is an enormous price to pay for the fans who sit behind the glass happily jumping and waving and hooting at the destruction of a man’s personality.

Hockey at its best is the best sport: nothing else has the sustained thrust and counter-attack, intensity, elegance, or flow of an intense contest between two well-matched teams. No other sport has faster breaks, more dramatic shifts of momentum, more sheer grace than hockey when it is at its best.

Why the league would choose to sell it on the basis of grown men battering each other’s faces into oblivion is beyond all sensibility.

In my opinion, shoot-outs are pretty boring. It makes hockey more like football: let’s all just stand around and stand around and stand around– oh wait! Somebody…. never mind. Let’s stand around some more…

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Don Cherry’s Violence in a Bottle

It is believed by some that if you ban fighting in hockey, the incidences of other infractions– high-sticking, elbowing, slashing– will increase, because hockey players have a certain amount of brutality in them, and if it doesn’t come out in the fists, it has to get out somehow. (Lord knows, Don Cherry wouldn’t want it to emerge in the form of sexual aggression or we might have hazings.)

Is that true? I don’t know of any research that supports this belief, but I’m sure that a lot of people believe it anyway because it seems to make sense and because “experts” like Don Cherry believe it.

I think it is an unexamined belief. I don’t know of any study that shows that it’s true. I know Cherry often liked to claim that European players were dirtier than their brawling North American counter-parts because instead of punching each other in the face like good honest all-American hockey players do, they supposedly hacked at each other more often with their sticks.

Don Cherry also believes that helmets’ lead to people hitting each other on the head. Why would you hit someone on the head if he didn’t have a helmet on?

To injure him?

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Cherry Pie in the Face

Hockey Night in Canada should fire Don Cherry.  The man is a complete fraud.

Don Cherry is a former NHL coach.  I emphasize the word “former”.  After short tours with the Boston Bruins and Colorado Flames, nobody wanted him anymore.  He was offered a post on Hockey Night in Canada.  He’s been there ever since, telling everyone else how to run their hockey teams.

His one virtue is he speaks his mind without thinking– if you can call that a virtue.  It is entertainment, but I wouldn’t call it a virtue.  For some reason (well, the reason is obvious– it wins viewers), Don Cherry is allowed to speak his mind on HNIC when nobody else is.  Remember Dave Hodge was fired for flipping a pencil when HNIC declined to switch to the last few minutes of an important game in Montreal instead of going to advertising.

Cherry lambastes coaches, referees, and players– especially European or Russian players–during the intermissions of hockey games.  You get the impression that if only Don Cherry were in charge of the Leafs or the Flyers or the Canadiens, the Stanley Cup would be a sure thing.

But wait a minute!  Don Cherry is in charge.  Don Cherry owns an Ontario Junior “A” hockey team called the Mississauga Ice Dogs.  Wow.  This team must be doing really great, right?

The Mississauga Ice Dogs are currently on pace to set a record all right.  It has about 8 wins.  It is about to set a record for the fewest points ever for a Junior “A” franchise.   The Ice Dogs have one of the top positions in next year’s OHL Junior “A” draft sown up.  But the most talented eligible players don’t want to play for Don Cherry’s team.

One of the biggest problems with the team is that many of the employees are members of Don Cherry’s family.  Another problem is that Don Cherry hires a coach, puts him in charge of the team’s performance, and then second-guesses all of his decisions.

And, of course, Cherry doesn’t want any Russian or European players on his team.

The result of these policies is that the Ice Dogs are the worst team in junior hockey.  Cherry should admit he doesn’t know anything about hockey.  He just mouths off at every opportunity.

It’s time for Hockey Night in Canada to bring in an expert analyst instead.