Wade Belak's Fight to the Death

The hackneyed cliche says three is a trend, but it never has seemed truer than with the third death of an NHL enforcer this summer.

The death of NHL tough guy Wade Belak – the third fighter to die in four months, and the second by his own hand – throws an undeniable pall over the looming NHL season and poses endless questions over the role of the fighter in a game inextricably linked to this country's identity. The National Post's Bruce Arthur, to whom we always turn when tragedy strikes hockey, can barely come to terms with Belak's death, given that the former Maple Leaf “always seemed at ease; he was freshly retired, and in town to appear on the CBC’s reality show, where he surely would have been the star. Except he’s dead, and hockey feels sick again, right to its stomach.” Few other fighters – and certainly not Derek Boogaard or Rick Rypien – seemed as well adjusted to their role in the game as Belak, and few were as well liked by fans or as ready to give a self-deprecating quip to a humour-starved media. “We’re getting practised at how to react, what not to speculate, what to say, how to feel,” says Arthur. “It doesn’t get better, though. Just more and more familiar.”

Adrian Dater, the Colorado Avalanche beat writer for The Denver Post, pens a column that every hockey fan must read before on-ice pugilists begin their yearly dance with the devil. Most enforcers in the NHL were gifted minor league players, but are only capable of holding on to jobs in the big leagues by getting 30 seconds of ice time, dropping the gloves, and skating to the penalty box. “It’s a Faustian Bargain these guys are given,” says Dater. “You want to be in the NHL and make big money? OK, but we’re not going to give you any more than a couple minutes a game and we only want you for one thing out there. Take it or leave it.” Dater recounts conversations with a host of enforcers – Chris Simon, David Koci, Jeff Odgers, Brent Severyn – and all related their dislike of having to be a goon to make money, despite the act they put on for the fans. Making this cycle even worse is that so many of these enforcers are thoughtful, intelligent players, the ones reporters turn to when they need something more colourful and insightful than the typical “We left it all out on the ice” stock phrases that you hear from the guys who grace cereal boxes.

At some point (and this is that point), it falls to the fans to take stock of their complicit role in the mental and physical struggles that these men go through. The league permits fighting partly because of tradition, yes, but more so because they get the impression that flying fists means more tickets sold. It's worth noting a distinction in fighting here. Fights sometimes erupt between players with greater abilities than the mere throwing of fists when passions boil over in tense games. Staged fights – the kind that made up the vast majority of Belak's penalty minutes – are little more than carnival sideshows masquerading as an honourable aspect of the sport.

Truthfully, many of us have been fans of those staged fights for as long as we've watched hockey. As an Ottawa Senators fan, I've personally cheered Wade Belak getting punched in the face by Brian McGrattan, yelling my support, after a couple of beers, when McGrattan played to the crowd after getting five minutes in the box. But no more. Belak is dead, and McGrattan has been in and out of rehab for drug addiction for years, his trajectory all too similar to Rypien's and Boogaard's in some small part due to the money I and many others forked over for tickets and merchandise. The toll has become too high. There is no reason for these fights to continue except for our own selfish bloodlust, and I vow to stay silent the next time two fighters square off.