Puckarinen

Frustrated by a recent article about fighting, SM-liiga CEO Vuorinen lashed back.

HELSINKI – It happens every year, and every year, the arc of the drama is similar. Something extraordinary happens in a game (read:fight), somebody comments on it in a big paper, different (but always the same) arguments fly back and forth, and then the discussions peters out, and nothing ever changes.

The people arguing against hockey fights bring up other fast and furious sports – rugby, soccer - and point to their non-fighting, often make direct comparisons between on-ice incidents and off-ice incidents - “what if you beat up a guy on the street” - and point to the NHL playoffs and major international tournaments, such as the World Championships and the Olympics for proof that fighting isn’t a necessary part of the game.

The other side often rebuts all that with “it’s always been a part of the game,” “it keeps the game clean”, and “I have never seen anybody leave a game when there’s a fight on the ice.”

Last week, Finland’s biggest newspaper Helsingin Sanomat published an interview with Jaakko Paavela, MTV3’s former executive vice president, and a current board member of Urheilukanava (“Sports channel”) in which he critized media for showing and potentially glorifying hockey fights.

“Through television the fighting is marketed directly to 400,000 people. In the arena, it is only the immediate audience that sees the squabbles,” he said.

He also suggested tougher sanctions to the players who fight, and banning referees who let players fight on the ice.

“The referees do get paid. Putting up with a fight should be directly deducted from their paycheck,” he said.

That was the drop that spilled SM-liiga CEO Jukka-Pekka Vuorinen’s cup. The same day, he sent a statement to the media, criticizing hockey debate in general, and the Paavela interview in particular.

“It’s great that people talk about our sport, and that it stirs up emotions, but unfortunately, the discussion is going to a direction that is only debated in Finland, the cradle of morals and ethics,” Vuorinen, also the president of Hockey Europe, snapped in his statement.

Vuorinen dismissed any action towards the referees, said that the SM-liiga will continue to be in charge of its own sanctioning, that there is even more violence elsewhere in the world - “It’s enough to zap through TV channels” - and that the media seems to highlight only the negative sides of hockey.

“The Paavela interview shows that everybody, even people who don’t understand much of the sport, have an opinion about it - often formed only through the medial image. Obviously, we, hockey people, have generated many of the not-so-good topics ourselves. It’s probably fruitless to explain how little fighting there really is in thousands of hockey games, or explain to the outsiders about the characteristics of the game, and how the fastest game on earth naturally causes conflicts between players,” he wrote.

Vuorinen’s statement was received with cheers by the hockey journalists and media around the country, ranging from, “finally, somebody stands up for hockey” to “the hockey deed of the year.”

And then the discussion dried up again.

Until next year.