Don Sanderson dies after fight

[mrusse01 0]

How many have died in the 100 years that fighting has been legal? Maurice Richard was one mean f*cker, and he never killed anybody, same goes for gordie howe. Even big Georges hasn't even come close to killing anybody. It is the epitome of a freak accident. Saying fighting should end now is like saying electric microphones should have been outlawed after that priest in waco was electrocuted.

You might be 100% right, I said the same thing after that poor girl got killed by a puck in stands...that it was stupid to put up that net when literally millions and millions of people had watched hockey games over the years before that, and as far as I know nobody had ever been killed by a puck.

But I think the NHL (or Hockey Canada, or someone) has to at least put together a serious commission to look into the dangers of fighting in the game. Like I said, at what point do you say to yourself, 'maybe this isn't just a freak accident'? You can't just sweep this under the rug and then in 6 months someone else dies, and everybody points back to this incident and wonders why nobody did anything about it. And yes, death is obviously the extreme, but how many guys are having careers ended, season ending injuries, minor injuries, and so on, during a fight? I don't know, I don't know if anybody has a straight answer to that right now. But I do know that I can think of numerous players, all in the NHL, just off the top of my head who have been seriously hurt in a fight within the last 5 years.

You look at some of the worst incidents in hockey in the last few years, and a lot of them come back to fighting. Does McSorely/Brashear happen if fighting is taken out of the game? No. Brashear probably isn't in the NHL. Does Bertuzzi/Moore happen if fighting isn't part of the game? No. Bertuzzi would never be trying to fight Steve Moore if fighting were just not something that happened in hockey. Does Don Sanderson die if fighting is out of the game? Again, no.

All due respect to the Sanderson family, and it's obviously not a fun topic to talk about a young man's death, but I think the sport of hockey owes it to everybody who plays the game to take this situation and use it to at least closely examine the role of fighting within the sport.

[M.W. 0]

How many have died in the 100 years that fighting has been legal? Maurice Richard was one mean f*cker, and he never killed anybody, same goes for gordie howe. Even big Georges hasn't even come close to killing anybody. It is the epitome of a freak accident. Saying fighting should end now is like saying electric microphones should have been outlawed after that priest in waco was electrocuted.

You might be 100% right, I said the same thing after that poor girl got killed by a puck in stands...that it was stupid to put up that net when literally millions and millions of people had watched hockey games over the years before that, and as far as I know nobody had ever been killed by a puck.

But I think the NHL (or Hockey Canada, or someone) has to at least put together a serious commission to look into the dangers of fighting in the game. Like I said, at what point do you say to yourself, 'maybe this isn't just a freak accident'? You can't just sweep this under the rug and then in 6 months someone else dies, and everybody points back to this incident and wonders why nobody did anything about it. And yes, death is obviously the extreme, but how many guys are having careers ended, season ending injuries, minor injuries, and so on, during a fight? I don't know, I don't know if anybody has a straight answer to that right now. But I do know that I can think of numerous players, all in the NHL, just off the top of my head who have been seriously hurt in a fight within the last 5 years.

You look at some of the worst incidents in hockey in the last few years, and a lot of them come back to fighting. Does McSorely/Brashear happen if fighting is taken out of the game? No. Brashear probably isn't in the NHL. Does Bertuzzi/Moore happen if fighting isn't part of the game? No. Bertuzzi would never be trying to fight Steve Moore if fighting were just not something that happened in hockey. Does Don Sanderson die if fighting is out of the game? Again, no.

All due respect to the Sanderson family, and it's obviously not a fun topic to talk about a young man's death, but I think the sport of hockey owes it to everybody who plays the game to take this situation and use it to at least closely examine the role of fighting within the sport.

I guess the big thing is: How do you "take fighting out of the sport"? The league Sanderson played in had automatic game ejections to players who fight. What can the NHL do? 5 game suspensions? 10? A season? It's easy to suggest removing something from the game, but it's very hard to eliminate something that is a part of the culture of the sport.

[Jordan 13]

If you have to design a helmet to allow easier fights, you are giving tacit approval to goonery -- not fighting, but goonery.

No more so than saying that face shields give tacit approval to high sticking. It is more of an acknowledgement that helmets do come off, and that a repeat of this incident, regardless of some well intentioned rules, is highly likely to occur.

[oldtrainerguy28 478]

Saying that fighting caused his death is like saying a spoon caused Michael Moore to be fat. With that logic, you might as well say that hockey caused his death. It has just as much to do with his death as fighting.

How did fighting not cause his death? He got into a fight, hit his head on the ice, and died because of that. You could say if he didn't get out of bed that day he would still be alive, but people don't say "Don Sanderson woke up Monday morning and later died", they say, "Don Sanderson died after hitting his head on the ice during a fight".

I've been for fighting in the game for a long long time, and yes, this was an accident...but at what point do you stop and start to really examine if maybe fighting should be taken out of the game? Do 5 junior players need to be killed before it's taken out of the game? 10? Does someone need to be killed by a punch to the face in the NHL? If Sidney Crosby got paralyzed the other night, would that do it? We describe events like these as 'freak' accidents...but I'm not so sure how freak they are any longer. I'd like to see someone do a serious study, across all levels of hockey, as to the effects of fighting.

www.29sports.com

Started this talk last year and infact I sit on the Safe Hockey Council of Canada and things like this are being discussed with the NHL and other major leagues. There will be information sent to the league with the most experienced people in the world with sport head injures putting the information forward.

Also at the CSA there is more being done there!

[#44wannabe 4]

Without meaning any disrespect, how do we know that there was not a more serious underlying problem inside of his head that just 'brought forward' so to speak by the contact between the ice and his head?

How do we know this wouldnt have happened if he had been hit and landed on his head? Or even how can we be sure a helmet would have saved him in this instance?

[mrusse01 0]

I guess the big thing is: How do you "take fighting out of the sport"? The league Sanderson played in had automatic game ejections to players who fight. What can the NHL do? 5 game suspensions? 10? A season? It's easy to suggest removing something from the game, but it's very hard to eliminate something that is a part of the culture of the sport.

Well the first question someone needs to figure out is, should we take fighting out of hockey? Once you get an answer to that, then you start to work on the 'how' part, and let's be honest it wouldn't be that difficult. Fighting already is on the verge of being out of the sport at the highest levels...you don't see fighting in the playoffs, in big international tournaments, or in almost any European league. Would it happen overnight? Obviously not. But if the NHL took the position to outlaw fighting, and was serious about it, within 2 or 3 years you just wouldn't see it with the exception of the odd incident maybe a couple times a year like you do in every other major sport. If fighting was out of the NHL, junior ranks would quickly fall into line as people began to realize that fighting is a skill that is useless at the pro level.

The real elephant in the room here is that you know for a fact that people in the NHL believe (and they are probably right) that fighting draws a lot of fans to the sport. To them it's not just about what's best for the player's health or the quality of the game, it's about the bottom line on the financial statements. Has the NHL even issued a statement on the Don Sanderson death? I haven't heard a peep from them yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if they just tried to ignore it.

[Jason Harris 31]

If you have to design a helmet to allow easier fights, you are giving tacit approval to goonery -- not fighting, but goonery.

No more so than saying that face sheilds give tacit approval to high sticking. It is more of an acknowledgement that helmets do come off, and that a repeat of this incident, regardless of some well intentioned rules, is highly likely to occur.

No, face shields do not give tacit approval to high sticking, although they do create a lack of awareness in some players to keep their sticks lower. However, a helmet designed to have its outer shell be removed, while still providing protection against a fall, would obviously be designed with one purpose in mind. Another way of looking at it is how many of us would want a helmet that could purposefully, or even accidentally, lose a good portion of its protective properties? 5%? 2%? 1%?

I think it would be fair to say that helmet would have a limited application in hockey.

[danielb 0]

I guess the big thing is: How do you "take fighting out of the sport"? The league Sanderson played in had automatic game ejections to players who fight. What can the NHL do? 5 game suspensions? 10? A season? It's easy to suggest removing something from the game, but it's very hard to eliminate something that is a part of the culture of the sport.

I think you need more than the current sanctions to properly deter fighting, the group (team & coach) not just the individual has to be effected/punished as then negative peer pressure will do most of the work to prevent extreme behaviour like fighting. With the current rules a coach can instruct/hint/tell a low value/skill player to go out and fight safe in the knowledge that the current penalty system is unlikely to make a difference to their chances of winning a match.

I would think ejecting anyone who fights and then combine that with something similar to what happens in Water Polo when a player gets ejected from a game. If a player is ejected from the game, then it is without substitution e.g. that player's team is man down for the REST OF THE GAME. Add in a short multi game suspension for the fighters, if necessary.

As someone who used to play Water Polo up to a national level I've seen about two or three players get ejected from matches in about ten years. This is mostly because if you do get ejected (usually for fighting/brutality) you really want to be out of the changing rooms by the time the rest of your team finishes the match: as they are usually fairly pissed off, as it is almost impossible to win if you are man down for a large part of a game.

If you introduced a rule like that I would bet on a rapid decrease in fighting during games. As the negative peer pressure players would receive from the their team mates and coach. Plus teams that are man down for large parts of a game would most likely lose would discourage fighting a lot more than the current rules.

[chippa13 1844]

I guess the big thing is: How do you "take fighting out of the sport"? The league Sanderson played in had automatic game ejections to players who fight. What can the NHL do? 5 game suspensions? 10? A season? It's easy to suggest removing something from the game, but it's very hard to eliminate something that is a part of the culture of the sport.

Well the first question someone needs to figure out is, should we take fighting out of hockey? Once you get an answer to that, then you start to work on the 'how' part, and let's be honest it wouldn't be that difficult. Fighting already is on the verge of being out of the sport at the highest levels...you don't see fighting in the playoffs, in big international tournaments, or in almost any European league. Would it happen overnight? Obviously not. But if the NHL took the position to outlaw fighting, and was serious about it, within 2 or 3 years you just wouldn't see it with the exception of the odd incident maybe a couple times a year like you do in every other major sport. If fighting was out of the NHL, junior ranks would quickly fall into line as people began to realize that fighting is a skill that is useless at the pro level.

The real elephant in the room here is that you know for a fact that people in the NHL believe (and they are probably right) that fighting draws a lot of fans to the sport. To them it's not just about what's best for the player's health or the quality of the game, it's about the bottom line on the financial statements. Has the NHL even issued a statement on the Don Sanderson death? I haven't heard a peep from them yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if they just tried to ignore it.

The real worry is what happens if you do take fighting out of the game. We already saw the lack of respect creep into the game when they tried to "instigator" fighting out of the game. If you take it completely out, I shudder to think of what will wind up happening out there to someone.

As for fighting in Euro leagues, well, in most of them you get a roughing penalty if you throw a good body check.

[Jordan 13]

In tonights Leaf game, Deveaux took Cullimores helmet off of him during the fight.

[mrusse01 0]

In tonights Leaf game, Deveaux took Cullimores helmet off of him during the fight.

That happens all the time. It's the first thing any fighter worth his salt tries to do. That's why all these pop off visors and what not would be useless, guy's just rip each other's lids off anyways.

Obviously people are going to play the 'cheap shots will rise' card if you suggest taking fighting out of the game, but like I mentioned it seems to work fairly well already in the playoffs, international play, and euro leagues. That's not to say NHL regular season is the exact same scenario, but it's worth investigating. As I mentioned, two of the most notorious cheap shots in recent NHL times are the McSorely high stick and the Bertuzzi punch, neither of which would have happened if fighting wasn't in the game.

[chippa13 1844]

That is a bit of a leap to say that those two cheap shots wouldn't have happened if fighting was not in the league. The reason fighting is down in the playoffs versus the regular season is because nobody wants to take the instigator that goes along with it since powerplays are at a premium in the second season. Also, the better players don't want to take themselves out for 5 minutes or 17 if the get the instigator. That said, with the instigator calls going the way of the dodo this season, if the trend continues, I'll wager that we'll see more fights in this postseason that we have in recent years.

[psh 25]

If this is any indication, it looks like the next issue of The Hockey News is going to take a serious and thoughtful look at fighting and will be well worth reading:

http://thehockeynews.com/articles/22215-TH...on-tragedy.html

[Leafsrok 0]

our team has stickers in memory of Don Sanderson. Due to our coach and Mike Sanderson (Don's dad) being quite close friends, and Mike running a few practices for our team this year, our coach was given a bundle of them at the funeral.