A version of this review appeared in the December, edition of the Literary Review of Canada. Was this a warning we were seeing, or maybe a dose of vengeance? Was it fulfillment of an arcane rite only understood by Zacks?
He revived, eventually, and left the ice under his own power, a towel pressed to his right temple. It was all over, then, except for the talking. And that was mostly it, so far as further reckoning went. There was nothing, certainly, forthcoming from the NHL, which maintains both a rulebook and a Department of Player Safety. According to the website hockeyfights. Nowhere is there such a ready archive where you can look into the motives of any given hockey fight, no register of messages sent and received, no docket of damages done.
Will the next time be any different? Are hockey fights a good idea? Do angry physical attacks really deserve a place in a game that purports to be for everybody? What do they say about our civil society? What about the potential for harm? Could it possibly be true that the blows that the punches that hockey players punch are actually a marvelous safety measure without which the game would teach us all the true meaning of mayhem?
You should know that the search for answers might take you in unexpected destinations. The bookshelf, for example, as old-fashioned a resource as that might seem in the digital present.
Take note: the term of art preferred by the artisans themselves seems to be enforcer. What exactly do hockey enforcers enforce? Not the rules, obviously. Dave Schultz was the primary puncher for the Philadelphia Flyers when they ran roughshod to a pair of Stanley Cup championships in the s. The Hammer they called him in the unruly years when he was bashing out new records for penalty minutes, throwing his weight into fights.
