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Dateline: April 26/02

A guy could get killed out there. That's what they were saying after Kyle McLaren flattened Richard Zednik.

In the fifth game of the Boston-Montreal series, with time winding down, Zednik took a pass and flew over the Bruins' blue line, cutting towards the net. McLaren, the Boston defenseman, was caught out of position and threw an arm out to block the Montreal forward, catching Zednik square in the face and sending him to hospital with a concussion, a broken nose and assorted cuts and bruises.

The next day it was the talk of hockey. "If this keeps up, someone is going to be killed," said more than one commentator.

Actually someone already has been killed. Several people have been killed playing hockey.

The most famous among them is Bill Masterton, because the NHL named a trophy after him. Bill only appeared in 38 NHL games before his helmetless head was sent bouncing off the ice one night in 1968. He died of massive brain injuries a couple of days later.

In fairness to the guys who hammered Masterton (there were two of them) it should be noted that, by all accounts, he was taken down by a clean hit. Watching the replay of Kyle McLaren's forearm shiver, "clean hit" is not the phrase that springs to mind.

We all claim to want clean, safe, respectable hockey, just like we all want lower taxes, an end to world hunger and a private beach in Tahiti. We especially want clean hockey when we see a mugging replayed over and over on the sports highlights, as the McLaren-Zednik episode was.

But for an entire century now, players have been cracking the heads, breaking the teeth, carving the faces, smashing the noses and stabbing the guts of their brethren. And we all love it. When push comes to shove, hockey fans will always settle for less than squeaky clean. Fans love a ferocious bodycheck, even if it leads to a boarding or charging call. We don't mind an undetected trip or slash or elbow, as long as it's our team that's getting away with it. We all demand that opposing forwards "pay the price" for straying in front of the net (even the referees often turn a blind eye to those battles). And of course, we still enjoy a good punch-up, even though concussions, broken legs, broken eye sockets and other serious injuries have resulted from recent hockey fights.

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