What would have happened to Marty McSorley if he had just said no when Boston assistant coach Jacques Laperriere ordered him onto the ice with 20 seconds to play in the Feb. 21 game with Vancouver?
– The former Bruins strongman wouldn’t have been found guilty of assaulting Vancouver’s Donald Brashear in the head with his hockey stick.
– He wouldn’t be serving 18 months’ probation.
– He wouldn’t be suspended indefinitely by the National Hockey League.
But would free-agent McSorley still be in the NHL if he’d have just said no?
For a historical perspective, consider the case of Paul Mulvey, playing for Los Angeles on Jan. 24, 1982, in a game at Vancouver.
Just as Laperriere apparently had a mission in mind when he made McSorley a solo sub, so also did Don Perry, the Kings’ head coach.
“Go out there and don’t dance!” Perry ordered the younger brother of ex-Blackhawks player and former Wolves general manager and coach Grant Mulvey.
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Paul Mulvey’s experience told him that order meant to start a fight.
Mulvey listened to his conscience instead and refused to fight.
After Gordon Edes wrote the story for the Los Angeles Times, the NHL suspended Perry for six games.
As for Mulvey, after four seasons, 225 games and 613 minutes in the penalty box, he got what amounted to a lifetime sentence. The Kings demoted him to the minors and no other NHL team expressed an interest. That season was his last.
View from the bench: The comments of British Columbia Provincial Court Judge W.J. Kitchen in prefacing his finding that McSorley was guilty put in sharp focus the inherent brutality of McSorley’s action.
“It was clear Boston would lose,” the judge noted. “There was no line change–he was the only player sent out. From his experience, and knowing his role on the team, this was a clear message to him to go out and finish things with Brashear. He said he was not upset by the earlier fight [that Brashear won], or the goalie interference [by Brashear], or the Brashear taunts to the Boston bench. His motivation for going after Brashear was twofold–to follow Laperriere’s order and to give Boston some pride to take into the next game.”
Sending a message via intimidation is commonplace in hockey and not uncommon in other sports.
But why bother in a lopsided game that Boston was losing 5-2 against a team from another conference?
The Bruins were one of the worst teams in the NHL. They weren’t going to play Vancouver again during the season and didn’t have a prayer of meeting the Canucks in the playoffs.
“That act is precisely why the criminal law has a place in the hockey rink,” said Crown Counsel Michael Hicks in presenting the case against McSorley. “It is an act that is completely irrelevant to the game that is taking place.”
No hard feelings: No chips were on Doug Gilmour’s shoulders when the Hawks’ former captain helped Buffalo to a 4-2 victory over his old team. “I’ve been through this too many times,” said Gilmour, playing for his sixth NHL team after being traded March 10. “I didn’t focus on this as a game with the Blackhawks; I focused on this as our first game of the season, one we had to win.”
Buffalo coach Lindy Ruff considers Gilmour invaluable. “His creativity has spilled off onto some of our other players,” he said.