Phaneuf and Don Cherry: some thoughts

Don Cherry tends to be a polarizing figure, to be sure.  For many he can do and say no wrong.  For others he is, well, a joke.

I’m not really interested in wading into either a defense of - or critique of - Don’s weekly Saturday night work.  I will say that on issues like player safety, (no-touch icing, the size of equipment causing injuries, hitting from behind, etc.) he has often been well ahead of the curve.

He is patriotic to be sure.  He can also be loud, annoying and seemingly narrow-minded, but he is paid to be entertaining and opinionated and he certainly fulfills that mandate.  He called Mario Lemieux a floater way back when (and Mario was, in his early days).  While he sticks to certain positions passionately if not always correctly and is therefore assumed to be something of a dinosaur, in a lot of ways he has been proven correct more often than not.  But everyone has their own view of Don and that's the beauty of free speech and divergent opinions.

(A funny aside…I remember when our eldest son, then maybe 8 years old and now in his 30s, was watching a game with me in our old house more than 20 years ago. “Coach’s Corner” was on.  I guess he had never seen Cherry before and after watching for a few minutes, he just turned to me and said calmly, not trying to be funny or cheeky, “Dad, doesn’t that man know how to speak without yelling…?”)

In any event, Don is Don and his "show" is still a can’t miss chat for a lot of people on Saturday night.

I did happen to notice late in the Boston-Leaf game that when Nathan Horton wanted to go with Phaneuf, Horton deliberately discarded his helmet.  Phaneuf did not.

Now, I’m hardly one to opine on the merits of fisticuffs in hockey or what the rules, formal or informal, should or should not be.  That's way beyond my area of expertise.  Like a lot of fans I like tough, clean hits though I’m not a big fighting guy.   But if two guys are legitimately ticked off in the old “heat of battle” moment and they want to have a go, no problem.  They can then cool off for a while in the penalty box.  I think the sport has bigger issues than fighting to deal with, including, yes, hits to the head and the seeming epidemic of guys getting hammered from behind into the boards.  This stuff just didn’t happen as much when I was a kid back in the 1950s and ‘60s.  There was dirty stuff, sure and on occasion some wild stick-swinging (Green-Maki, Shack-Zeidel), which was awful in its own way.  But thankfully it was pretty rare.  Of course, there was also the bench-clearing brawl era from the early '70 until well into the '80s when the league finally cracked down.  Thankfully, those things have largely been dealt with.

(As an aside, I don’t pretend to know all the so-called fighting “codes” and all that, though I’ve watched the game for more than 50 years.  I think sometimes this code stuff is largely made up. But whatever.)

But I just didn’t like to see Phaneuf fight with a visor on when the other guy had discarded his headgear.   I mean, it’s none of my business, but doesn’t that seem an odd thing, to accept a “fair” hockey fight but then  make sure the other guy has nowhere to connect?

Cherry made a point of this after the Bruin encounter, and tied it into the Leaf captain’s unwillingness to take on big Chara earlier in the game when Chara had issued the invitation.

Now, I wouldn’t tussle with Chara if someone offered me big money.  But them I’m not an NHL player.  And I’m certainly not the captain of the most popular (and proud?)  franchise in hockey history.

I’m not quite sure what I felt watching Phaneuf, as a Leaf fan, when he fought the way he did with Horton  Embarrassed?  I’m not sure what the word is.  Maybe just disappointed.  I mean, the guy has clearly been playing better of late, has been a physical—and an offensive—presence.  He’ll likely be a very good player for the blue and white.

But a leader?  I don’t know.

There are different forms of leadership, absolutely.  And I'm not suggesting you have to be a fighter to be a leader.  You don't.

I keep thinking about Sittler, Gilmour, Wendel Clark and guys like George Armstrong and Dave Keon who all led in different ways.  They all wore the "C" proudly.  As a fan, I never felt crummy about them as team leaders.

But there was something that left me, well, wondering, after watching that sequence unfold on Saturday night.

Your thoughts?