Moron (2 page)

INTRODUCTION

THE MORON MEMO

I
wrote my now-infamous “Moron Memo” blog entry (originally called “Neutrons, Pro­tons, Neurons and Morons”) on the night of April 30, 2012. Only a few of my closest friends and family saw it – it was on my seldom-visited blog, and I had little notion that the few words of that journal entry would change my life four months later.

I resigned in September 2012 as the President of Hockey Calgary, hoping that my departure would allow the Board of the organization to continue unencumbered in their work to make hockey safer for the children of minor hockey in Calgary. Upon my resignation, I initially felt that all of the work we had done to bring attention to body checking and other dangerous elements of the sport would be lost. Ironically, my resignation from the organi­zation only gave me a bigger platform to work to­wards change within the system. This book is the continuation of my desire to start a conversation that will reform the sport we all love, and make it safer for our children for generations to come.

It is important to recognize that, although the Moron Memo focused on body checking, this book is about more than simply that one topic. Our beloved game of hockey is faced with great turbulence. It is a well-known fact that the num­bers of participation are dropping, immigration patterns are changing, costs are escalating, and the respect element is being called into question on all fronts. This book will cover it all.

I remember growing up playing the game of hock­ey and hearing the coach tell me, “How are you doing there, Todd?” I was sitting on the bench at the time, after taking a big hit from someone on the other team.

“Well, I’m a little dizzy,” I said.

He said with a comforting smile, “Oh, you got your bell rung, did you? You’ll be okay.”

My coach was a great person, and he didn’t know all of the research that we know now. But, in es­sence, the theory has always been, “Hey, Kid, suck it up!”

Don Cherry famously talked on Canadian televi­sion about Russian hockey players supposedly al­ways lying on the ice faking injuries – often imply­ing that “real” hockey players get up, even if they are injured. “Don’t be a Russian,” is the phrase that many people adopted from Cherry’s discus­sions on the air.

But there’s a fundamental difference here. Cherry was talking about professional hockey players who do this for a living. Our kids in minor hockey are just kids. They shouldn’t be treated the same way, particularly when their health is in danger.

I have seen countless coaches, parents and others tell our young hockey players, “Get up,” “Don’t be a Russian,” “You just got your bell rung – you’ll be fine!” Haven’t you? It’s a part of our game, and it’s something that we have to change.

With all of the information that is now available to us about the dangers of hockey, we know without a shadow of a doubt that our kids are being hurt. What are we going to do about it? It is our respon­sibility to step up and advocate for our children.

Young children often have their heads down when they are skating. Most of them haven’t developed the skills to have their head up all the time. Be­cause of this, when the opposing player (100 pounds) runs into Johnny (70 pounds) at full speed, it’s as if he just skated into a brick wall. Johnny lies motionless on the ice, but there’s no penalty called. Guess what? It was a good, fair body check, so there
was
no penalty.

You can hear a pin drop in the arena as little Johnny lies motionless on the ice. Obviously, he is concussed. He is in disarray. We have allowed the game to have body checking in it. Little Johnny is now lying on the ice.

The coach and the referee come over, and they call 911. They don’t touch little Johnny because they don’t know what’s wrong with him. Is he concussed? Did he break his neck? Did he break his back? What has happened?

When it’s your child lying motionless on the ice, your heart stops, and terror creeps in. What has happened to your eleven-year-old boy? I have seen this happen many times, and every time, a mom or dad will take in a breath, run to the rink-side, anxiously hoping their child will be okay. If this has happened to you, you know the sinking, terri­fied feeling that takes over your entire being. You are responsible for their welfare, and you feel helpless.

At some point, I didn’t really believe that body checking was a serious issue. But once I saw the data, and I watched injuries happen on the ice, I realized that something had to be done. What I don’t understand is, if parents, coaches, and others have seen the same data that I have, why don’t they support a safer environment for their young children?

I’m not saying that injuries should never happen. All sports carry risks. If you are on the monkey bars and fall off, you could break your arm. If you are playing baseball and a ball hits you in the head, you could get a concussion. If you play football, you could dislocate a shoulder. There are many dangerous things that can happen as a result of sports. Hockey is no different. If you put a kid out there with skates, heavy equipment, a hard surface, and then tell them to skate as fast as they can, and hit a hard black piece of rubber as hard as they can, there will be injuries.

The point is not that there won’t be any injuries at all, but that we can reduce the number of serious injuries in our children if we only change one ele­ment of the game. Kids have plenty to learn at that age about every other aspect of the game. Why not make their lives safer?

Research has shown that regulating body checking won’t affect kids’ ability to become future NHL stars. In fact, several NHL players have gone on record supporting this very research.

Here are the statistics: 33 percent more young hockey players in Calgary are hurt than respective children in Quebec (where body checking has been outlawed for 25 years in the Peewee age group). Extrapolated outwards, if kids play hockey in a body checking league, they are much more likely to have a serious injury (missing two or more games because of injury) than a non-body check­ing league. Yet we still allow our kids to get out on the ice, despite the dangers. We know that hun­dreds more of them will be significantly injured because of our complacency, yet we do nothing. It’s time to change that.

We would never allow our kids to go to Play­ground A if we knew that Playground B was safer. If your kids were to go to Playground A, they would be 33 percent more likely to be seriously hurt. Would you send your kids to play there?

Safety is a critical issue in minor hockey, and it is the issue that eventually led to my resignation as President of Hockey Calgary (as I mentioned pre­viously, as a result of the body checking debate and my “Moron Memo”). However, it is not the intention of this book to singularly focus on this topic. There is one issue, however, that permeates my entire narrative: the problem in minor hockey is not the kids – it’s the adults.

If you send your little boy to play at Playground A, I think I can safely call you a moron.

Following a successful career in business (see my book Boardroom to Base Camp), I decided to spend a great deal more time with my children and family. Because my son, at the time, was in minor hockey, I volunteered with his team, and then as a member of the Hockey Calgary Board of Directors, finally being appointed the President of Hockey Calgary in June 2011.

At that same meeting, the Hockey Calgary Board agreed to form a committee that would review all of the body checking data available, and come back on a recommendation for how the associa­tion could make the environment safer for partici­pants. This was done as a response to a direct re­quest from the members at the AGM when I was voted in as President. Therefore, I also saw my charge as the new President of Hockey Calgary to work hard on the topic of body checking – since this was clearly one of the key mandates given to the Board at that time.

Within the following months, we worked to as­semble a Body Checking Review Committee made up of twelve members across minor hockey in Calgary, of various demographic profiles. Members of the committee came together on a regular basis, and began to review the data in front of them. The committee’s goal was to give rec­ommendations back to the Board – they wouldn’t be making the decisions themselves. I met with them on several occasions, and made sure there was clarity around their important role in this de­bate. All of the data showed that, if we wanted the game to be safer, we should take the body check­ing element out. Having said this, the committee was to be impartial and review all of the data, and come back with the direction that was supporting the membership’s request. That in itself became a problem with some of the committee members who clearly arrived at the table with subjective viewpoints.

While there was a general consensus among the many, there were a few very vocal individuals who didn’t like the message. They didn’t like the change that was going on. At this point, we still had hope that we could make the change our kids needed. Unfortunately, these people were eventu­ally able to slow the progress towards needed re­form in Hockey Calgary.

The discussion continued through the rest of 2011, and into the first part of 2012, and the Body Checking Review Committee continued to review data and was close to making a recommendation. Near the close of the season, in late February 2012, the committee notified me that the committee had come up with a 52-page report.

The Board analyzed and reviewed the report on body checking on two separate occasions. I was also present at those meetings, but was not allowed to vote (unless there was a tie). A total of ten hours of meeting time was dedicated to that one topic, and at the end, a majority of the Directors voted to remove body checking in Peewee and a second motion would be prepared for the consideration of the removal of body checking in the lower catego­ries of Bantam and Midget.

These motions, and the direction which Hockey Calgary intended to take minor hockey are an­nounced through what I still today believe to be an extremely effective communication process. First, we announced it to the 24 community presidents in Calgary via conference call, and the next day, we had a press conference that was well attended by media outlets in town.

Anyone who has had training in the area of media relations, or has ever been charged with the release of critical and sensitive information, would agree with the discreet process that Hockey Calgary employed for this rollout. It was profes­sional, and paid particular attention to avoiding leaks. It was a well-orchestrated plan by Hockey Calgary.