As you may already have heard, Joel Ward’s game-winning goal for the Washington Capitals, eliminating the Boston Bruins in a dramatic seventh-game overtime, resulted in a slew of hideous racist reactions on Twitter. This might have made national news on its own, but particularly coming on the heels of the horrible racist reactions to The Hunger Games film and the heavily social-media-driven controversy surrounding the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, it was justifiable to afford it coverage. The rapid-response condemnations from both the Bruins and the Capitals were excellent, if a bit of a no-brainer. Ward himself had a very level-headed reaction to questions I’m sure he never wanted to have to answer. At Puck Daddy, Harrison Mooney, himself a person of color, penned an excellent response that went beyond the dismissive and oversimplified idea that “race shouldn’t matter,” and called out those who were ready to blame the whole thing on the Bruins fans, as if racism in hockey were endemic to a particular city or fan base.

None of this raised my hackles. Racism in hockey is an issue barely beneath the surface. The NHL has advanced a bit, I guess – there are now almost enough active NHL players of black or African descent as there are teams – but the issue is still present, and worth discussing. When the hero of a game seven overtime is assailed with racial epithets on a major social network, that’s noteworthy.

What concerns me is that those racist tweets now come up every time Joel Ward is mentioned. Tonight, it was Harrison Mooney who felt hate-tweets merited mention in his write-up of the Rangers’ overtime win, in which Ward took the four-minute double minor on which the Rangers scored their game-tying and game-winning goals. I’m not accusing Mooney, or any of the other reporters who made the same decision, of having an agenda — far from it — but I’m concerned about the unintended consequences when idiots on Twitter keep working their way into the story.Athletes, hockey players perhaps more than others, often become defined by a simple narrative — one or two facts that the general public knows about them, that come up again and again during game action or in news reports. Sidney Crosby has his parents’ clothes dryer, Henrik Lundqvist has his rock band (and his beautiful, beautiful face) and Patrick Kane has his limousine and his preference for exact change. It would be totally unfair to Joel Ward for his narrative to be defined by his race, or worse yet by the people who hate him for his race.

[On a related note: As a bisexual hockey player, I know if I were in the NHL I'd be a lot slower to come out if I thought every time I did something notable, the article would mention all the people calling me faggot on Twitter. ]

That leaves aside, of course, that every media shout-out rewards the Twitter trolls for their bad behavior. Twitter is the Internet’s current top destination for attention whores, users constantly chasing “trending topics” and tallying up their retweets. The more attention is paid to anything on Twitter, the more people are going to climb aboard the bandwagon. Just after the game tonight, “Joel Ward” was the third-ranked trending topic. In my very brief, informal survey, very few of those tweets even mentioned anything relating to the sport of hockey.

As to whether the subject merits mention, I’d say that the subject of race in hockey always merits discussion, and reactions on Twitter fit into that discussion. What I’d question is whether it should be brought up in relation to an individual player. Search for any NHL player of any prominence, and I’d wager you’ll find a sizable contingent of Tweeps saying hateful, horrible things about him – but I never see those tweets mentioned, even following a game in which a player scores a big goal or takes a killer penalty. After his late-game goal tonight, for instance, Brad Richards received some pretty choice words from more than one Twitter user (No links here – it’s not hard to search Twitter if you’re curious). I didn’t see that mentioned in any write-up of the game.

Furthermore, one rarely sees a story about President Obama’s latest statement accompanied by links to racist tweets about him. Sure, there are plenty of articles about the way the President’s race is attacked, but it’s not as if every time his name comes up, the author reminds us that there are bigots on Twitter saying horrible things. The same is true of Oprah, of Kanye West, and virtually every other prominent person of color who might be the subject of electronic hate speech. Articles about Alex Ovechkin don’t reference Twitter users who say nasty things about Russians. Hell, they rarely mention the many prominent hockey commentators who regularly and unrepentantly slander an entire hemisphere and their “style of play.”

Yes, I realize I’m playing into the trend by even writing this. I do so only in the slim hope the sports media will begin to consider the unintended consequences of their coverage. I’m not suggesting it’s wrong to call attention to racism, whether or not its in the context of hockey. I just don’t think it’s fair to an athlete that his identity should be defined by a bunch of attention-seeking bigots on Twitter. Let’s let Joel Ward determine what Joel Ward’s narrative should be.

It’s not news when trolls say racist stuff on the Internet. Let’s stop treating it like news, and give them exactly the attention they deserve: none.

I am writing, though. Painfully close to finishing the novel I’ve been working on for the past couple of years. I was originally hoping to finish it by December 31, 2011. Then it was January 31, then April 30. Now I’m aiming for May 31. May the gods of writing and Henrik Lundqvist will it so.

Here, according to Greg Wyshynski at Puck Daddy, is a comparisson between the NHL’s old (as in one-year-old) and new rules regarding headshots:

…and here is my proposed headshot rule, circa March 7, 2010:

(1) Any hit that either (a) contacts only the head or (b) contacts the head before any other part of the body, whether intentional or unintentional on the part of the player initiating the hit, should be a minor penalty.

(2) Any hit where, in the referee’s determination, the player initiating the hit deliberately (a) targetted only the head or (b) targetted the head before any other part of the body should be a match penalty.

I referred back to that proposed rule in two other posts, one on March 9, 2010, and one on April 17 of that same year. Combined, those three posts have 173 hits. As I see it, the evidence is incontrovertible: I have single-handedly saved the NHL from its headshot problem. While I’m at it, let me say hello to Brendan Shanahan, who is obviously a reader. Hi, Shannie. Nice work. Sorry you didn’t join the Blueshirts when you were a little younger.

In all seriousness, I love the new rule. I only hope it’s enforced the way it’s written. Under the new rule, the infamous Richards-on-Booth hit is a penalty, as it would be under the “old” rule. This Kaleta-on-Markov hit, which would have been legal under the old rule, is now a penalty, as it should be – but the catastrophic-yet-accidental Steckel-Crosby collision at the Winter Classic would still be legal. That’s a good rule.

Will there be complaining? Absolutely, there will be. Plenty of fans (and commentators, and journalists) will complain about specific hits that seem accidental or unavoidable. I will say as I have said in the past: this is an NHL that presently enforces minor penalties for (a) accidentally clearing the puck over the glass, and (b) accidentally breaking an opponent’s stick. Surely, protecting the health of players’ brains is worth the same measures we use to prevent broken equipment and play stoppages, even if it means a few wrong calls.

While the NHL is making my rule-change dreams come true, I have another recommendation: First, let’s start enforcing that diving rule a little more regularly. Then, let’s change the rules so that instead of offsetting minors, a diving penalty negates the original call and forces the diver’s team to kill a penalty. I give it until Christmas before diving is essentially eliminated from the game.

Way back in November of 2007 I posted about the sordid saga of Ethan Reynolds, formerly of the model blog / community Brat Boy School (since shut down; internet wayback machine link here – caution, it loads slowly).  I’m seeing echoes of that experience in the recent downfall of “Hockey Kid Mikey,” an alleged gay high school hockey player promoted by gay web site OutSports who, after building a small empire on the web, turned out to probably be a 40-year-old gay hockey fan.

Both appear to be cases where some blogger used the magical power of the internet to pretend to be someone else.  In both cases the bloggers built an enormous base of enamored fans, and in both cases their success began to open doors outside the internet shortly before their fictitious persona fell apart.  In neither case were any actual crimes (apparently) committed, and yet in both cases the fans, once betrayed, called for blood.

As I was in 2007, I am fascinated by the response from fans.  It’s not as if this technique is old.  I’ve compared Ethan to nudie centerfolds, who always seem to find titillating answers to the same questionnaire, but the creation of a fictional persona is not limited to the vaguely pornographic.  Think of Dear Abby, or Poor Richard, or for that matter any talk-show host.  None of these people is really the person they present to the world.  Granted, that fact is disclosed to varying degrees, but I’d imagine there are many Letterman fans who would be outraged to discover the real person behind the television character he portrays.  This is, I would hazard to say, at least partly to blame for the outrage behind the most recent “Late Night Wars,” and why Jay Leno emerged as the villain while Conan’s popularity grew: cutthroat businessman is pretty far removed from the brand Jay has been selling his viewers, while  Conan’s brand is apparently not as far from his actual personality.

I understand that blogs are a personal means of expression, but the idea that one person can really connect with another via the internet is dubious.  The very nature of the internet is artificial; social networking sites are entirely based around the business of carefully crafting a personal brand.  Like the sci-fi trope of the “other-dimensional being extending into our dimension”, our online avatars represent exactly that portion of ourselves that we have decided to show to others.  Some people elect to make that portion decades younger, or more attractive, or more athletic, than the aging corporeal meat to which their consciousness is tethered.  I find it fairly depressing that so many people attach themselves emotionally to a being who is essentially just digital code, to the point where they become murderous or suicidal (as several of Mikey’s readers claimed to be) when Toto pulls back the curtain.

Not that I’m encouraging this kind of business practice.  When the actual human behind the “Hockey Kid Mikey” character started to notice his blog community growing out of control – when he started getting comments from gay teenagers who said his words saved them from suicide – that was probably the time to pull the rip-cord.  Delete the blog and vanish, or come clean about creating a false persona, rather than riding it out like George Costanza until your lies finally blow up in your face.

Ultimately, unless the writer is committing some kind of crime (and I stress here that, so far at least, there is no evidence of any crime) then the onus must be on the reader to approach everything on the internet with skepticism.  How different is emotionally attaching oneself to an invisible blogger from believing the latest chain email about how microwaved water causes cancer or Barrack Obama is planning to give Texas back to Mexico?   The internet is, more than anything else, a colossal work of collaborative fiction.  Historical fiction, perhaps, but fiction.  Anyone who approaches it otherwise is going to get burned.

For my part, I have a confession to make: I am not as smart as I come across on my blog.  The crafting of each post includes frequent visits to Wikipedia, and some sentences are even revised before publication.  Speak with me in person and you’ll quickly notice I struggle to recall the names of the most major historical figures, I confuse the dates of major events, and I giggle every time Noam Chomsky is mentioned because I get a mental image of a pac-man like monster devouring everything he sees (I call him CHOMP-sky).  I do promise, however, that I am the person I claim to be.  At least the good parts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgMG9iLx4Qc

I have one problem, and one problem only, with this hit – but it’s a big problem. Andy Sutton very intentionally and deliberately targets Leopold’s head.  Leopold is clearly in a vulnerable position and doesn’t see Sutton coming, which means Sutton can apply any hit he chooses – and he chooses to avoid contact with Leopold’s body and hit only the head.  Notice the way Sutton spins off of Leopold into the boards?  That type of spin-off is the same you see in a head-on car crash, where one swerving driver is trying to avoid the collision and doesn’t quite make it. Notice that term trying to avoid, because that’s really what Sutton does here.  He specifically tries to avoid Leopold’s body, so that he can transfer all of his energy into Leopold’s head.

Sutton’s defenders point out, correctly, that Leopold had his head down, that Sutton kept his elbow at his side, that this is not a “lateral backpressure” hit, but a head-on (no pun intended) open-ice hit, and that based on those criteria this is currently a legal NHL hit, a “hockey play” as has become popular vernacular recently.  This is all true, but I counter that this should not be a legal NHL hit for one simple, clear reason: a hit that specifically targets the head (solely or primarily) is, and should always be regarded as, intent to injure.

At this point, there is abundant evidence, both from scientific studies of the long-term effect of concussions and from the observable on-ice consequences of hits to the head, to demonstrate that a head-hit is one of the most dangerous, if not the most dangerous, play that a hockey player can make.  Be it the McSorley stick to Brashear’s head, Bertuzzi’s punch to Steve Moore (or Matt Johnson’s to Jeff Beukeboom), the slapshot to the noggin that ended Mike Richter’s career, or any of the assorted interchangeable “lateral backside” hits of the past three seasons (Mike Richards and Matt Cooke get gold stars) we have all seen the ugly consequences of a hard hit applied to the head.

Furthermore, there is absolutely no reason the NHL should tolerate one player specifically targeting another player’s head.  These types of hits do not make the game more exciting or more entertaining.  As a long-time hockey fan, I see the value and the role of the big hit and the hockey fight, both of which I have spoken out to defend.  They are a part of the fabric of the game, major momentum changers, and fantastically entertaining.  A hit to the head is none of those things.  It is an ugly incident, a momentum killer when, as often happens, it is followed by ten minutes of bringing a player out on a stretcher, it embarrasses the league as the hit gets played over and over again on sports news networks, and it can diminish the quality of the overall game if the concussed player happens to be among a team’s top scorer.

Let’s also remember that these types of hits have never been part of the sport.  In fact, they are a recent development.  The NHL’s talking points, repeated ad nauseum after the GM meeting that gave us the “lateral backside” rule, would have us believe that these hits are a consequence of increased speed and open ice, a nasty side effect of a very desirable improvement in the game.  That’s probably true in small part, but any hockey fan can tell you that there is one main cause for this kind of hitting: the NHL’s asinine zero-tolerance approach to “retaliation” means that players can no longer defend themselves or their teammates, and thanks to the “it’s not in the rulebook” argument, these kinds of hits will generally go unpunished, no matter how much sleep Colin Campbell may lose.

This is not a unique circumstance.  In the 1980s and 1990s, the NHL struggled with epidemics of slew-footing and hits targeting the knee.  Then they passed rules against both and started handing out penalties and supplemental discipline, and now how often do we see a slew foot or a deliberate hit to the knee in an NHL game? Four or five times a season maybe?  Meanwhile, hardly a game goes by without at least one ugly head-only hit.

The solution here is a clear rule barring players from targeting the head, solely or primarily, when applying a check.  I will reiterate the rule change I have proposed before:

(1) Any hit that either (a) contacts only the head or (b) contacts the head before any other part of the body, whether intentional or unintentional on the part of the player initiating the hit, should be a minor penalty.

(2) Any hit where, in the referee’s determination, the player initiating the hit deliberately (a) targetted only the head or (b) targetted the head before any other part of the body should be a match penalty.

Granted, it might require some word-tweaking from those more familiar with the rulebook than I am, but a rule like this would address the specific problem and still protect the integrity of the game.  Sutton could still punish Leopold with a devastating check, but he would be penalized for the hit in the video above.  It wouldn’t exactly be difficult to hit Leopold’s body – in fact, it would take less effort than the precision head-strike Sutton did apply.  One of my favorite things about this hit, in terms of illustrating my argument, is that no one can argue that “Leopold tried to dodge the hit and that’s why it just hit his head,” as they did with the Richards-Booth hit and several others.

My plea to fellow hockey fans is to please refrain from the slippery-slope argument that says that outlawing one form of hitting is going to lead to taking hitting out of hockey altogether.  The NHL has outlawed types of hits before (boarding, for instance, or knee-on-knee hits) and we still have a physical game.

Yes, a rule like this might occasionally result in a minor penalty for an unintended hit to the head – but as I have said before, the NHL already awards minor penalties for unintentionally clearing the puck out of play and for unintentionally breaking another player’s stick.  Are we really advocating a league where broken sticks and pucks in the crowd are treated more harshly than intentionally injurious and potentially career-ending attacks on fellow players?