Seven Oaks Magazine.

Stop Smirking, Bettman: NHL culture of drunk driving needs addressing
October 12, 2007
Dale McCartney

This summer was a tough one for professional sports, as scandal after scandal received news coverage from the mainstream media. The NFL struggled with charges that one of its marquee stars, Michael Vick, participated in a gruesome dog-fighting ring. One of Major League Baseball’s most hallowed records, the all time home run record, was broken by a player who, besides being one of the least socially graceful athletes today, is also undoubtedly a user of steroids. An NBA referee was even caught in an illegal gambling sting, and it was revealed he had potentially altered the results of games to benefit mobbed up bookies, including an already controversial playoff game that proved to be the tipping point in the San Antonio – Phoenix series.

Things got so bad this summer that Dave Zirin, a progressive writer who has made a career out of insisting people have to take the negative side of sports more seriously, actually wrote a “let’s all cheer up and love sports again” story to launch his career at Sports Illustrated.

But for hockey executives, it seemed like they dodged the bullets. Leaving aside the unspoken but widely known fact that hockey players, while not necessarily heavy steroid users (although rumours abound, of course), are consistent users of ephedrine (which players call, or at least used to call, greenies), the NHL seems to be avoiding off ice controversy. There’s no animal cruelty, unless you count Don Cherry parading Blue on Hockey Night in Canada; no steroids, at least discovered – it helps to have a totally useless testing policy; and no mobbed up refs, just assistant coaches involved in Mafia run gambling rings.

But all is not well for NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, and the league has little to crow about. While some sportswriters joked about the arrest of two budding NHL stars, Eric and Jordan Staal, at a party in Minnesota this summer for underage drinking, the incident is actually a benign version of a type of problem that is widespread in hockey.

There is a clear pattern of behaviour in the NHL around alcohol, a pattern that is unhealthy and dangerous. This past week, former NHLer Rob Ramage was found guilty of killing his friend Keith Magnuson (another former professional hockey player) while driving drunk, and faces 15 years in jail. Toronto Maple Leafs forward Mark Bell is currently suspended for 15 games because of a drunk driving conviction, related to an incident in which he rear ended another car and seriously injured the other driver. After this hockey season finishes, he will serve 6 months in jail in California.

There are many more examples. Jay Bouwmeester, another young star, recently pled guilty to driving under the influence; in April, Ed Belfour and Ville Peltonen were arrested after assaulting police officers in Florida while drunk. Belfour has a history of violent drunken behaviour, perhaps most famously having offered Dallas police officers “a billion dollars” if they would release him without charges. Chris Pronger, Dominick Hasek, Milan Hejduk Sergei Fedorov are all recent NHL stars who have been convicted of alcohol related offences.
Moreover, the NHL has a terrible history of deaths due to alcohol. On top of Keith Magnuson, Steve Chiasson died in 1999 while driving drunk, and Pelle Lindbergh died in 1984, losing control of his car after he had been out drinking with some of his teammates. Perhaps most famously for Canadians, Tim Horton was killed while driving drunk in 1974.

Hockey players have not been the only victims, either. Craig MacTavish, a player at the time and now the coach of the Edmonton Oilers, pled guilty to vehicular homicide in 1984 after killing a woman in a car accident while he was impaired. He spent a year in jail, and spoke against drunk driving as part of his community service.

What a pattern like this illustrates is that, unlike the scandals absorbing other sports now, alcohol abuse is not limited to a few players in the NHL. In fact, it is a broad cultural phenomenon. Beer and hockey are closely associated at almost every level.

It is not easy to find a cause for this massive pattern of misbehaviour. Unquestionably personal responsibility is an issue. I strongly believe that these men have a right to try to rebuild their lives, but it is not inappropriate to expect them to answer for some of these crimes for the rest of their lives? Why have sportswriters not asked MacTavish to talk about the culture of alcohol abuse that permeates hockey, and continues to lead to such tragedies? Do the Oilers, the team he coaches, serve alcohol on their charter flights, or to their players after games or practices? Almost certainly yes. It is important that we hold these individuals responsible for their actions, and start to insist that, as role models, they take advantage of the league’s substance abuse program to address their alcohol abuse.

But there is a cultural phenomenon at work here too, which is more insidious. Alcohol abuse is not regarded with enough seriousness. Moreover, drunk drivers are often young men, a group that of course both makes up the large majority of the NHL and is most susceptible to following professional hockey players’ example.

As a culture we treat alcohol abuse too casually, but within sport the problem is magnified. Combining a cultural sense of physical invulnerability with a permissive attitude that glorifies alcohol abuse as an example of masculine power leads to the situation we are in now, where many young men (a Canada Safety Council survey found that 15% of drivers had driven impaired at least once over a 30 day period) are engaged in reckless behaviour.

The NHL needs to address this for two reasons. The first is that it undermines the league’s contention that hockey players are good role models, to a far greater extent than the Michael Vick case has undermined a similar claim by the NFL.

More importantly, however, the NHL needs to speak out about it because it is uniquely placed to do so. Athletes are icons of youthful masculinity, and hockey is one of the most important social forces working to shape young Canadian boys and men today.

Thus, by taking a clear stand against this behaviour, and coupling it with an attempt to really explain how inappropriate it is, the NHL – or more importantly, the players of the NHL – could strike a blow against a culture that permits such egregious recklessness. Not only do individuals need to answer for their mistakes, but we need to start addressing the cultural roots of this behaviour.