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Sunday, November 17, 2002

By Dejan Kovacevic, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

The drumbeat is sounding north of the border. From Vancouver to Halifax, Canada's self-declared protectors of the game are fretting that the NHL's crackdown on obstruction is ruining hockey by taking away its toughness.

Opinion-makers on television, radio and newspapers bemoan that fighting is down and that hitting is fading away because, they feel, players are too nervous about hearing a referee's whistle.

This is not unexpected.

As Toronto Star columnist Damien Cox wrote last week, "It was always assumed that there would be a backlash. ... Referee-baiting and whining about penalty calls, after all, is as ingrained in the Canadian hockey spirit as the sport itself."

It also has been the Canadian way to glorify the game's more violent traits, as is best evident by the remarkable popularity enjoyed by Don Cherry, the television commentator who made much of his living by selling his "Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Hockey" videotapes.

Cherry appeared on a Fox talk show this past week and tore into the NHL's new ways.

"The next thing is going to be skirts, I'm telling you," he said, adding that the only people happy with what he perceives as a softer style of play are "tree huggers" in Canada and "some people listening down in West Virginia who don't understand hockey."

Fighting is down. But it's down less than half a fight per game, from .644 last season to .602 so far this season. If fighting keeps up at this pace, it will be the second-highest total in the past five years.

Hitting is tougher to quantify, especially now that the NHL has discontinued keeping checks as an official statistic. So is the more general question about whether the game is going soft.

The only way to get an accurate gauge is to ask the participants, so we took the issue to the region's preeminent expert on hockey toughness: Steve McKenna, the Penguins' 6-foot-8 enforcer.

"I don't see it," he said Friday at Mellon Arena. "Where are they getting this idea that the game is losing its toughness? Watch the games."

He dismissed the slight drop in fighting as an aberration that will even out over time.

"With the hurry-up faceoffs, you don't have as much stuff going on when you line up. Before, there would be a stick jab or an elbow or some words, and that would be the preamble to a dance. But there are ways around it. If there needs to be a fight, there's going to be a fight. We're smart enough to find a way to do it. We're not all rock hammers out there."

He said Coach Rick Kehoe never hesitates to send him on the ice when his presence is needed.

"We do it here, and everyone's still doing it. What tough guys aren't doing now is going out there and hacking or slashing a guy because they know that's going to get called. Is that the problem? Is that taking the toughness out?"

He also insisted that the NHL's emphasis on preventing hooking and holding in the neutral zone has brought more hitting rather than less.

"If you can't hold up the forecheckers, guys are going in there harder and nailing people. It used to be that you could latch onto somebody like a water-skier to slow them down. Now, you can't. Now, there's pressure on everybody all over the rink because they know they can get hit. That makes it more exciting, I'd say."

McKenna allowed that, if he were viewing the situation selfishly, he'd be all in favor of the old ways.

"Hey, hooking and holding is great for me, you know? I'd love to do that. But that's no good for the game. What's going on now is good. There's nothing wrong with this. It's fast. It's fun. It's shooting, scoring, hitting and fighting, too. It's hockey. I don't understand who would have an argument with that."