Your April 3rd editorial on head injuries in the NHL and other sports failed to raise an awareness of the dangers to observers.
I enjoy hockey and I annually follow the long competition that awards the Stanley Cup. I watched the Summit Series in 1972 and took Phil Esposito's emotional, sweat dripping lecture to heart, realizing as he spoke that I saw myself somehow personally attached to whether one of those two great teams lost. What nonsense! I was later heartbroken to read of Bobby Clarke's deliberate injury to Valeri Kharlamov.
Injuries are inevitable in any sport, whether tennis elbow or concussions, but I object when players deliberately set out to injure. I turn down the volume and look away when two hockey players "drop the gloves". I want the fight to end. I don't need a commentary on it. I don't need to see it on a replay. To me, it's not part of the game and I find it unfortunate that your editorial did not mention more strongly the media's role and the spectator's role in supporting violence.
The only thing worse than Don Cherry's loud jackets is his loud defense of the "need" for fighting in hockey. He's always talking to kids. Maybe one day he'll say, "Now kids when you drop the gloves and try to knock somebody else out or perhaps permanently injure them, remember that you're continuing to support an attitude that sees anger and violence as something positive."
At the end of the editorial, Neil Godbout laments "Hockey still hasn't wrapped its head around head injuries. Until it does, players and the game itself are at serious risk."
More fundamentally, people need to wrap their heads around violence as entertainment. In my opinion, any activity which defines victory as the administration of a concussion to the opponent is not a sport. I would love to see a Citizen editorial that calls for the elimination of fighting in hockey and the banning of boxing, MMA and other concussion focused sports.
People love to push the abilities of their bodies to the limit and other people love to watch them. What a game changing world it would be if those activities took place in a world where everyone involved cared as much for the safety of the other person as they cared for their own.
James Miller
Prince George
