The periodic hand-wringing over ice hockey is with us again, this time over the sucker-sticking of a Ranger by an Islander, the names of whom will now be linked forever and will come to me by and by.

Hockey gets this wider audience every so often by making folks who don't watch it cringe from its brutality, ferocity and cruelty, which are, all in all, guaranteed ticket sellers.

Could every game be depended upon to have someone with a thick stick in his hand smash it into the face of someone not looking, well, then, network television would be back faster than you can say Ultimate Hockey.

But ice hockey has these long periods when no violence happens at all, no thugs leap from ambush to whack the innocent, and skaters fly along the ice inspired by the common conspiracy that there is a puck out there somewhere.

The occasional smashing of bodies or poking of sticks, even the dropping of gloves, are all nice teases, but compared with, say, a crash at the finish of the Daytona 500, or a limb-breaking tackle by a flying linebacker or even the hazard of hanging a head over home plate when a fastball is coming, hockey does not seem to be really trying.

It is predictable that Chris Simon is now suspended indefinitely for chopping at Ryan Hollweg's head, with greater punishment pending, because hockey always reacts like this when natural and encouraged thuggery is caught on camera.

This is not hockey, hockey says, and yet it is.

No one was really hurt in this case, not as the Avs' Steve Moore was when he was ambushed by Todd Bertuzzi, or when Donald Brashear got clubbed by Marty McSorley.

The list is much longer than this, but the point is, the list is long.

This is the most discussion about hockey all season, and it always seems that the only way the non-hockey public gets drawn into hockey is through incidents of violence.

Protests from outsiders will be humored, for appearance sake, by the lords of the game, rather like ward orderlies handling a harmless patient.

The inevitable result is the public gasps and then looks away. Local law officers threatened to treat it like a real crime, just as the Nassau County attorney is this one. But nothing lasting ever happens.

Hockey then goes back to wondering why it is lint in the great sports blanket, why it is not loved like other sports.

Hockey cannot have it both ways. It cannot tolerate fighting and reject it when it is too brutal. It is a concept as flawed as limited war.

Either the game should get rid of it altogether or let it reach its natural expression. Boxing has rules, but the referee always warns the fighters to protect themselves at all times. In hockey, this should always be understood.

Not that this was a fight. You must have seen it by now. Hollweg had checked Simon, skated away and then turned back to where Simon, now upright, had a clean shot at getting him back.

Hockey would say a clean punch was the most retaliation required, and then the two of them could settle it like brutes, instead of one being the ax and the other the kindling.

So, something must be done, and hands will be wrung. But nothing will be stopped. Complaints about hockey are looked upon by hockey as, oh, a manicurist complaining about rodeo.

Hockey is perfectly happy with the frequent pummeling that goes on, and hockey audiences are OK with it as well.

Rather than turn away, witnesses are more likely to break into spontaneous applause. It is rather odd, in fact, that here in the U.S. of A. - which is where the money hockey needs happens to be - so much joyous mayhem has failed to take commercial root.

Arguments that hockey would get a wider appreciation if fighting were stopped just do not seem to apply.

We Americans love fighting. We even love fake fighting, which is why we line up to watch wrestling, roller derby and Jon Stewart.

Maybe what we don't love is watching foreigners fight. That's why bantamweights and sumo wrestlers don't draw large crowds.

And maybe we aren't exactly enraptured trying to follow an invisible ball, or puck in this case. If we want to lose track of the ball, we have golf.

lincicomeb@RockyMountainNews.com

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