Don Sanderson, a 21-year-old defenseman with the Whitby Dunlops of the Ontario Hockey Association’s Senior A league, passed away early Friday morning at Hamilton General Hospital. Sanderson had been in a coma since December 12 when his team was playing the Brantford Blast. Sanderson was involved in a third period fight during the course of which his helmet flew off and he went down, hitting his head on the ice.
It wasn’t long after Sanderson’s death before the talk shows and newspaper editorials began discussing violence in hockey and raised the age old topic of banning fighting in hockey. Ban it! That seemed to be the consensus. The reality is that as tragic as the death of the 21-year-old was, it was an extremely rare occurrence in the sport. According to the Ontario Hockey Association, this was the first such death in the league’s history. Sanderson’s death resulted from the unfortunate combination of his helmet coming off during the course of the fight and then hitting his head hard on the ice when he went down. All indications are that this was an ordinary, consensual hockey fight and it should not be lumped in with other incidents where players have intentionally used their sticks as a weapon or deliberately blindsided an opposing player.
Meanwhile on the west coast four people have died either skiing or snowboarding on Whistler and Blackcomb mountains since the date of Sanderson’s last hockey game. These deaths occurred not only because of the weather conditions making the mountains unstable but because the skiers and snowboarders ignored clearly marked warning signs and entered areas that were considered to be unsafe and out of bounds. Surprisingly, or maybe not, there are no calls to ban these sports on the mountains that have taken four peoples’ lives in less than a month. The solution seems to be not a ban but better policing on the slopes. This is the hockey equivalent adding a couple of more on ice officials. Unless mountain cops are going to be placed every few feet to mark the areas that are out of bounds, this is not a solution. A solution would be to simply ban skiing and boarding on these dangerous slopes at least during the time that the weather conditions makes the mountains more unstable. But unlike hockey fights that do far less serious damage, there have been no calls to ban the sport.
So why the difference? Why is it that makes Sanderson’s death resulting from a hockey fight proof positive that fighting needs to be banned while skiing and snowboarding deaths are treated as just natural consequences of the sport? It could simply be that life is simply cheaper in BC than it is in the spanking new have-not province of Ontario. But that’s not the reason.
The difference between the sports is that snowboarding and skiing on mountains like Whistler are trendy; hip. It’s something that the beautiful people do. No one would ever think of depriving them of their cool sports no matter how many warning markers are ignored or how many deaths occur. Hockey on the other hand is considered lowbrow; something that is watched by beer swilling yahoos whose biggest fear in life, even in these unstable economic times, is what to do on a Saturday night after the hockey season ends. People who are involved in hockey, unlike the cool westerners who take to the slopes, need to have their every move regulated. These types need to be protected from activities that many people consider to be barbaric and beneath a dignified society. And they need to be protected from themselves. The fact that many more people die from snowboarding and skiing than they do from a consensual hockey fight means nothing. Saving lives has nothing to do with the positions taken in these sports.
Fighting in hockey in Ontario can’t be all that bad. If it were, Dalton McGuinty would have passed a law specifically making a consensual hockey fight illegal. It would probably result in a minimum $1,000 fine for a first offence and the offender would have his skates confiscated for three months. We would constantly be seeing Dalton’s police commish, Julian Fantino, who never met a camera he didn’t like smiling broadly while holding up a pair of freshly confiscated skates.
In the near future we will hear a lot about Don Sanderson and banning fighting in hockey. While this is taking place, just think about the snowboarders and skiers going out of bounds at Whistler.
