PINDER: In a way, Jennifer Botterill is like Don Cherry, bold in her opinions

Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC) takes me back to my childhood — Saturday night, hot dogs in front of the television, and the Leafs or Canadians on HNIC. Decades later and after long involvement in many aspects of the sport and business of hockey, HNIC remains a must-watch program.This gets us to last Saturday night when Jennifer Botterill admonished the retaliatory actions of the Canadien’s team enforcer, after a dirty hit knocked its second overall draft pick, two years ago, out of the game. This created a terse conversation with her two fellow panelists, Kevin Bieksa and Luke Gazdic during the between periods panel led by Ron MacLean.Botterill, with three gold medals, is one of the most accomplished hockey players in Canadian history. She is also a member of one of our significant hockey families. From Winnipeg her father Cal was a player I came to know during the training camp of Canada’s National Team in 1967, the first step on the journey to the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France.A world class skater, Cal but did not make the team, perhaps lacking the same understanding of the game as his daughter. Don’t cry for Cal — a respected sports psychologist, he has played an important long term role working for many hockey people including coach Mike Keenan — Cal survived this nasty guy.He also helped me conquer the yips when my putter refused to move — he also survived my putting woes.The other Botterill offspring, Jason, also a notable player, is now involved in the management of hockey, currently an assistant to the General Manager of the Seattle Kraken and previously the GM of the Buffalo Sabres.During the panel review, Botterill further expressed that the game is changing, or should. The panelists, both former players, explained why it was important for the Canadiens to retaliate, and send a message around the league that its young star is “off limits”. The tension within the panel was unusual.On the ice, in the broadcast booth, and now even behind the bench (a female assistant coach in Seattle) diversity, equity and inclusiveness in hockey is accelerating. Yet, Botterill has been critical of men’s hockey and its rules, or their interpretation, on several occasions as an increasingly outspoken observer.This leads to questions from viewers, television producers, and the panelists, among others. As an accomplished player with global experience, Botterill fully understands the game. But women's hockey has different rules. It is almost unimaginable that fisticuffs would occur in women's hockey.Perhaps this is why the other two panelists repudiated Botterill, politely explaining their differing views drawing on years as professional players. Thus far social media has been highly critical of Botterill. The first question then is whether there a right and a wrong here? My view is no — the on-ice culture of hockey has been evolving over time as has the values of society. She is not alone in her views.This leads to a second question — is it appropriate for her to use her panelist podium to advocate her personal desire to see men play a different, less physical game, and turn the other cheek?For years HNIC featured Don Cherry, a former player, longtime coach, and opinionated booster of physical hockey. He also used his pulpit to salute many of those in important but oft unheralded occupations such the military, police officers, firefighters, and so forth. He remains a very popular and outspoken Canadian patriot in his own blustery fashion. He always said he would go out with his boots on, and that he did, after criticizing immigrants for not wearing poppies on Remembrance Day. He was unfairly labelled a racist. HNIC has survived the unpopular Cherry firing and remains a first class broadcast.Its biggest risks may be overexposure, or the loss of Ron MacLean, if the rumour mill has any credibility. I hope not.For consistency and common sense, Botterill is entitled to her views, and to share her values like Cherry. A side of me admires people who stand up for their views, especially when it's not easy or popular. On the other hand, believe it or not still today, the mindset and strength of men and women are usually different, also acknowledging individual variability within each gender. Maybe she or most other women cannot feel or understand the side of men which leads to physical confrontation. Frankly, increasingly neither can I, now at an age when everything hurts.Back in my days as a junior hockey player, the Western Hockey League had so many brawls in warm that they had to put up a fence on the red line. This evolved into the teams warming up separately, now common in hockey everywhere. Advancing to international hockey where players hated each other on the ice, the play was much dirtier. Raging with patriotic emotion, we tried to injure the players opposite as they did us.The NHL, as it has across a broad range of issues under the outstanding leadership of Bettman and Daley, continues to improve the spectacle and make it safer for players. Gratuitous violence is much less common, and heavily penalized. But hockey differs from other physical sports, in that all players have sticks in their hands - dangerous weapons when in the wrong hands at the wrong time. Happily, there has been a reduction of serious stick infractions. In today's NHL today even laying the blade of a stick on opponent’s hands is penalized.But fighting, not an unlikely future subject of Botterill, as it has been with other well-meaning observers (including my mother,) is an important outlet for the energy, competitiveness, ever higher stakes and masculinity of the players. It is more benign than stick work, and often clears the air.Through retaliation, players around the league learn it is “hands off” of certain players, usually the highest skilled and important to team success. Ironically, this form of the law of the jungle, in some ways reduces the role of referees. There is mutual respect, even an informal code among players who meet each other regularly on the ice and in the off season.Botterill, with her family pedigree, outstanding record as a player, and early acceptance as a broadcaster, may never understand the code, or as Bieksa described it as “an eye for an eye.” Her style of hockey has its own culture and is also exciting. Watching our women win the gold medal in Salt Lake City during a ski trip with my family, is one of my fondest and most memorable hockey experiences.Her spunk, sincerity, and courage aside, my worry for Jennifer Botterill is that if she persists in alienating the fan base of HNIC she risks the same outcome as Don Cherry. Whether it is the right time and place, and whether she is the appropriate messenger to the HNIC audience, are yet to be determined.HNIC is achieving inclusiveness and diversity. Yet another question may emerge — equity might eventually, like Cherry, cost Botterill her pedestal.

PINDER: In a way, Jennifer Botterill is like Don Cherry, bold in her opinions

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