...Someone should reasonably expect to be attacked because other people have been attacked before? ... I can drag out a whole list of plays that were incredibly dirty and beyond the reasonable limits of the game. Is there a special number of occurrences at which dirty actions taken on the ice suddenly become just another thing for which players sign up?
Ya, thats pretty much the old Code
TMI. You step outta line, pay the price, retaliation, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Sometimes immediate & swift, other times maybe justice served a game later, a month or even a season hence. If slashed, sucker~punched, hit from behind, cross~checked or whatever the old Gordie Howe "take the guys number, later" if being watched by a Ref. Other times of course
"eff the penalties, yer goin down right now Mommasucka". Here of course the motive for the attack being an earlier perceived "Dirty Hit" by Moore on Naslund, disputed or denied that Crawford ordered the retribution but in such cases a Nod is as Good As a Wink yes? I dont think Beruzzi "meant" to end Moores career, no way, he just wanted to beat him up some. Obviously beyond tragic consequences for Steve Moore & for Bertuzzi. Hasnt been the same player since.
And yes, whole culture of it, absolutely wrong, should never have been allowed to seep into the game but... when you have the speed of the game, clubs in your hands, full contact, the game for decades marketed on its potential for violent outbreaks, you know what is going to happen. Tex Rickard of the Rangers in the 20's used to hire off~duty ambulances & drivers to circle MSG at full speed with sirens wailing to draw a crowd. In another case of "orders from the bench", a hit put on whomever, Legendary Coach, GM & Innovator in Boston Art Ross supposedly ordered Psych Job Billy Coutu off the bench in a Stanley Cup game to wreak havoc on not just another player, but so to the Referee with whom Ross had "issues" in terms of how he was calling the game. Billy there decking the Referee, then body slamming a Linesman who came to his fellow officials rescue. Premeditated. Coutu was Banned for Life. Art Ross never prosecuted nor made to pay. Member of the HHOF.
Yes.... and highly amusing really, at least some of it... Billy Coutu had been traded to Boston from Montreal (Habs) where he'd developed a serious hatred for Eddie Shore of the Bruins. Now he's Eddies team mate. First practice, within seconds, runs Shore into the boards, somehow managing to severe Eddies left ear from his head.... so Edward there skates off, blood everywhere, changes into his street clothes, puts his ear in his pocket & goes looking for a clinic or a Doctor to sew it back on.... finally finds some quack willing after being refused elsewhere as being impossible and so without the aide of anesthetic while holding a vanity mirror proceeds to instruct a
Seamstress exactly how to go about reattaching his severed member..... ha?...... so its stuff like that.... totally Macho stories of indestructability, invincibility, of losing teeth & bodyparts, of sacrifice... merely a flesh wound..... upon which much of this culture is based. Play through the pain, and ya, an eye for an eye.... nothing new about it.... John Ferguson supposedly "ordering" up Bobby Clarkes hit on Kharlamov in 72 & subsequently denied by Clarke... lists endless.
