The Greatest Game by Todd Denault

Author:Todd Denault [Denault, Todd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7710-2637-9
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2010-10-25T16:00:00+00:00

Winnipeg, Manitoba, October 24, 1975. It was an unprecedented and bold move made by one of the biggest stars in the sport. A little over a year before, Bobby Hull had been the only professionally active hockey player to answer questions at the province of Ontario’s inquiry into hockey violence. At the time he had lamented how the game that he loved, the game at which he excelled like few others, had degenerated into what he termed “goon” hockey. But in the year since the inquiry, he had seen frustratingly very little action in response to what he considered a problem of epic proportions.

He had thought long and hard about what he would do next. Truthfully, he didn’t know if what he had planned would make any difference, but to sit still and do nothing was anathema to his way of thinking. So, after informing his superiors with the Winnipeg Jets, Hull took the drastic step of temporarily quitting the game he loved, as a form of protest against what he viewed as the growing violence and brutality in professional hockey. Hull’s stand drew front-page headlines throughout Canada. “If something isn’t done soon,” Hull asserted, “it will ruin the game for all of us. I’ve never seen so much vicious stuff going on. Instead of making hockey a better game, we’re tolerating people and things that are forcing a deterioration of the game.”22

On the front page the report of Hull’s protest shared space with the news from the opening day of the provincial government’s Royal Commission on Violence in the Communications Industry. James McGrath, a Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament, caused a stir and was widely applauded when he declared that “the most violent Canadian made program on television is Hockey Night in Canada.”23

Bobby Hull would rejoin the Jets two nights later and Hockey Night in Canada would still be broadcast every Saturday night, but now the pendulum appeared to be swinging to the side that advocated against the violence. The NBC television network, which had openly advertised fighting in an attempt to bring in more American viewers, pulled the plug on its contract with the NHL because of poor ratings. Opinion polls increasingly showed the public growing disenchanted with the direction of the sport. Sports Illustrated ran a picture of two players fighting on the front cover of its November 17, 1975, issue under the banner headline, “A Violent Sport Turns Vicious.” Inside in an article titled “Wanted: An End to Mayhem,” the magazine argued that the NHL should “do away with the fighting once and for all … Fear not, hockey fans, good solid hard-hitting play and the healthy sort of intimidation that are integral to all contact sports will not cease and may even intensify. As in football, there is plenty of leeway within the rules for any player to make his muscular presence felt … Failing any such miracles, the NHL will continue to be plagued by a split personality that threatens a ruinous alienation of affections.

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