Spector on Belak: Fighting chance

We’re all searching now, for some solution to hockey’s latest malady. And of course, there will be those who see a simple solution to a complex problem.

“Ban fighting and this will never happen again,” they’re already saying. Of course, if hockey had banned fighting years ago, we would never have known who Wade Belak, Derek Boogaard, or Rick Rypien were, as none would ever have played in the National Hockey League.

But they’re falling now, the heavyweights. Three, now, inside one summer. People are concerned, and they should be.

Boogaard, lost to an overdose. Rypien, reportedly by his own hand.

And now Belak, one of the happiest, most employable of them all. Bright and funny, with a 1,000-watt personality.

He had a wife, two kids, and two post-hockey gigs to put food on the table. He was still in the limelight with Battle of the Blades, and had a TV gig in Nashville once that concluded. Life after hockey was so much better than it is for so many other ex-players, you’d think.

What possibly could have been burning a hole in his soul, to cause a 35-year-old man with so much ahead of him to find death in a hotel room? Whether tortured or behaving badly, the police said his death was not suspicious. We may never know the details.

This isn’t a concussion issue, however. Something that can be solved by instituting stricter rules, or finally getting past the NHLPA’s filibuster and getting rid of those hard-capped shoulder pads.

This one is cold and rigid.

There is only one way to completely eliminate the mental angst, the drinking/drug problems, and the post-career depression that has dogged the game’s scrappers for as long as the heavyweight has had a role in the game.

That is to eliminate fighting. No fighting means no fighters. Problem solved.

Make no mistake though: no fighting in the NHL means no Belak, Boogaard or Rypien. No John Kordic, or even Vancouver’s Todd Fedoruk, who admitted this week to battling addictions for years. An entire subset of players is phased out, with the wave of a wand.

So you take away the role in the game that many believe is at the root of these deaths, but in doing so you take away the support system and monetary gains that the game provides these players.

Now you don’t have Rick Rypien, the highly paid hockey player who battles depression. You have Rypien the plumber, or accountant, who battles depression. The difference is, if or when he passes away, nobody writes a story or turns on a TV camera.

You don’t have Belak the former heavyweight, found dead in his hotel room. But you might find Belak the construction worker instead. Because construction workers may not have the angst that fighters have, but they don’t have the opportunity or the support system either.

As much pressure as comes with fighting the toughest guys in the NHL every night, every hockey player I’ve ever met has said the same thing: “Real pressure is being unemployed, and having to make rent and put food on the table for a wife and two kids. That’s pressure.”

It also has to be said that the NHLPA/NHL Substance Abuse and Behavioral Health Program is the Cadillac of programs, by all accounts. Anyone who says there is nowhere for a player suffering from mental illness, stress, or addiction to turn to doesn’t have a clue. There might be a player on each of the 30 teams who has used “the program” in anonymity and resumed his career without anyone ever knowing.

If fighting is indeed at the root of these deaths, are we to believe that with some counselling or guidance, a player like Rypien or Belak could learn to perform the gruesome job description of a bare-knuckle fighter in good mental health?

No chance. This is all or none.

Of course fighters dislike fighting. Nobody wants to be punched in the face, and very few even enjoy punching an adversary in the kisser.

They enjoy the paycheque though, and when it comes to six-figure jobs, they’re willing to swallow hard and drop the mitts. Then, so often, they self-medicate.

There is truly no middle ground on this one.

But before you ban fighting, you might want to ask the rest of the fighters what they think.

Follow me on Twitter @SportsnetSpec.