Hockey needs an attitude adjustment

11Steve Spott was an assistant coach with Canada's national junior team and his regular job is head coach of the Kitchener Rangers of the Ontario Hockey League, which has recently revised its rules to forbid all contact to the head."I think our league's done a real nice job being a pioneer here and we're proud of it," Spott said. "And the game's not ruined."

Spott's experience this season has been on both sides of the fence.

He has coached young players, both with Team Canada and his own team, who have done unsavoury things.

"Let's call a spade a spade. I've got a player in my room who's a bit of a predator on the ice," he said. "I meet with him about it, discuss it with him. Those (predatory) hits are the ones we as coaches have to take some responsibility on."

He has also watched one of his own players, Ben Fanelli, take a blind-side hit and suffer a fractured skull.

"I believe in contact to separate a man from a puck," Spott said. "I'm the GM that recruited Ben Fanelli, I'm the one who sat down with his mom and dad and the only thing Sue Fanelli said to me, the only thing, was, 'I don't want my son to get hurt.' I'll never forget that.

"Unless you've walked a day in my shoes, you wouldn't understand the effect a check to a head can have on somebody's life. For me, we have to do a better job gaining respect among ourselves before we do anything. There's been a lot of respect lost in the game."

Longtime hockey writer and TSN hockey broadcaster Bob McKenzie thinks some coaches have to be better leaders.

He thinks some are "wilfully ignorant."

Once at one of his son's tournaments, he saw a rival player throwing up before a game. He had been hit in the head earlier in the day.

"His parents wanted him to play but the coach of that team was aware he got dinged and wouldn't let him play and the parents were mad," McKenzie said. "They just said he had the flu. That's not uncommon.

"Parents are sometimes the worst offenders with their own kids. Or it's not uncommon for minor hockey coaches to say the kid's fine.

"I don't want to brand everyone like that, like they're malicious or they're not paying attention. It's just that some people don't have a clue, some have a clue but want to pretend it's not happening."

Players have to be able to rely on their coaches to do the right thing when a concussion is involved. That means not returning to play too soon.

"Sometimes kids don't want to tell their coach how they're feeling," said pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Patrick McDonald, who treats many a player who suffers a concussion. Dr. McDonald is also Manitoba chapter director of ThinkFirst, the injury prevention and information resource.

"Sometimes I think the coaches don't want to ask because if they know, sometimes it's harder to say, 'well, no, you can't go back and play.'

"I think of a coach as someone not only getting you to be a better hockey player but as someone who should be a role model. Most coaches do that but we have to have them all onside that it's not in anyone's best interest to have a child, or an adult for that matter, back playing before they're ready to play."

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 9, 2010 B9