Directed by: Alex Gibney.
I
am a huge hockey fan. I have been a fan of the L.A. Kings since I was 6 years
old, when they got my favorite player of all time – Wayne Gretzky. Yes, I was a
bandwagon hoper back then, but since I suffered through 25 years with the team,
I believe I can call myself a true fan now, and last year when they won their
first Stanley Cup it was perhaps the greatest moment of my life that I really
didn’t have anything to do with. The NHL has changed since I was a kid, and
Alex Gibney’s The Last Gladiators shows one of the ways in which it has – fighting.
There is no doubt that fights still happen in the NHL – and even if the media
wags a disapproving finger at the NHL for allowing it to continue, fighting
will always be a part of the game. But it isn’t as big of a part as it once
was. Watching The Last Gladiators takes you back to a time when bench clearing
brawls were common. And the speed and ferocity of the fights in those days seem
much worse than today. Fighters today are a little more concerned for their own
safety – as well they should be – and do a better job of protecting themselves.
But back in the 1980s, two men simply squared off and starting pounding on each
other until one of them fell over.
One
of the toughest fighters back then was Chris Nilan, who is the main focus of
Gibney’s documentary. Nilan admits he wasn’t a great hockey player – he
couldn’t skate very well, shoot very well, or pass very well. But what he could
do was fight. He wasn’t afraid of anyone, and for years as a Montreal Canadian,
he would go toe-to-toe with anyone who dared mess with one of his teammates. He
got better at hockey over the years – his coaches and teammates helped him work
on the fundamentals of the game, and he even scored 20 goals one year. He
didn’t get “pretty” goals like Gretzky or Mario Lemieux, but you plant him in
front of the net, he couldn’t be moved, and he'd whack in a rebound goal. If
that sounds easy, you try it sometime.
But
Nilan, like many former NHL tough guys – or enforcers or goons or whatever you
want to call it – has had a rough time since leaving the NHL. The movie has an
interview with Bob Probert – probably the most infamous of these guys from that
era – and will later show his funeral. He died of a heart attack, after years
of struggling with alcohol and drug abuse. He was only 45 years old. The
autopsy also showed signs of brain damage – from all the concussions Probert
got in his career as a result of fighting. The documentary features other tough
guys – Nilan, Tony Twist, Marty McSorley and others list all their injuries and
surgeries they had over the year to repair the damage to their bodies they
inflicted on themselves and each other over the years.
What
always strikes me when I see these enforcers interviewed is that they all seem
like nice guys. You would think that guys whose job it is to beat people up
game in and game out, would have a screw loose, or be violent, nasty people in
their day-to-day lives, but for the most part, they aren’t. Nilan is filled
with regret for some of the things he did outside of hockey – yes, there were
some fights – but mainly it was his drug addiction (to painkillers) and
alcoholism that he regrets. And these tough guys have a code – they don’t
really want to hurt each other. They just want to fire up their team, or defend
their teammates. The most telling example of this “code” comes not from Nilan,
but another tough guy who says when he was fighting one time, his shoulder
popped out of the joint and he let out an audible gasp of pain – the other
fighter asked him what was wrong and when he told him the shoulder popped out,
his opponent said “Okay, fight’s over” and stopped. Many of these guys became
good friends after their playing days were over.
Fighting
will probably always have a place in hockey. None of the fighters interviewed
think it should be taken out of the game, and every time they do a poll of
players in the NHL, the overwhelming majority think it has a place in the game
(I believe the last one I saw was at 98% for fighting). But the debate around
fighting in hockey has ramped up in recent years. Concerns about concussions
are real – and how they affect the quality of life of players after their
playing days can be horrific (not quite as bad as football players, but not
good either). Many in the media want to take out “staged” fights, but leave
non-staged ones in the game. If staged fights got eliminated, so would the jobs
for these enforcers – because of the most part, all their fights are staged.
Many see this as a good thing – after all, most enforcers aren’t very good
hockey players – certainly not NHL level at anything other than fighting.
But
to wrap up the fighting debate in the cloak of player safety, and go after just
“staged” fights doesn’t make much sense to me. You can get a concussion or a
major injury in a fight whether it’s staged or not. What the NHL needs to
decide is if fighting has a place in the game or not – and then either let it
go, knowing the risk the players are willingly taking, or eliminating it
completely. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
I
know that most of this review has turned away from Gibney’s documentary and
talked about fighting in hockey, but, well, that’s just the way it is. The Last
Gladiators is a must see for all hockey fans. Seeing what Nilan and other tough
guys have gone through since their glory days may well make them think twice
before cheering on hockey fights. And the debate about fighting in hockey is
real, and should be had – just like the debate about concussions in football
must be had as well. As fans, we don’t really see hockey players as “people” –
they are out there on the ice playing for our amusement – we cheer for them, or
boo them, as we see fit, and when their playing days are done, for the most
part, we don’t think of them ever again. What The Last Gladiators does is make
us see Nilan, who always seemed like the toughest guy in the world on the ice,
as a real person who has paid a hefty price. Only part of that is because of
hockey, but undeniably hockey contributed to his demons. I still don’t really
know what I think of fighting in hockey – as a kid, I loved it, but for the
most part now when a fight breaks out, I yawn, and wait for the game to start
again. The Last Gladiators is an essential addition to the debate about
fighting in hockey.
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