Tue Mar 8/05
Slippery slopes don't work in hockey either

Iain MacIntyre in today's Post:

If [Steve] Moore, who could earn more in an award or settlement than he would as a fringe player in the 30-team NHL, is successful [in his lawsuit], it is reasonable to expect other players who suffer injuries will follow precedent. And not only in extraordinary cases.

What about a player whose wrist is broken by a slash or who suffers a concussion from a crosscheck or whose knee is blown out by a dubious check? If he can't play — or can argue he isn't able to play at the level he did previously — would he file for payback, especially if he could make more in court than he could on the ice?

Well, it depends. Moore isn't the first player to be gravely injured in an NHL hockey game; he just happens to be the first to decide to sue. This is much less a product of the incident than it is of Moore's situation. Had it not been for Bertuzzi, he could conceivably have made $75,000 playing AHL hockey this year, and ten times that, hypothetically, on an NHL roster. But hypothetical is all it was. Steve Moore's career was over the moment Bertuzzi lost his shit, and not just because of the injuries. You only had to read the comments from people like Markus Naslund to know that for reasons totally unrelated to fractured vertebrae and lack of talent, no NHL team was ever going to sign Steve Moore again.

So yes, if another fourth-line plug with limited long-term NHL prospects delivers a clean hit on a superstar, gets taunted and stalked for weeks on end and then sucker-punched into the stone age, I fully expect him to sue. And I'll expect him to win, just as I expect Steve Moore will. But if that unlikely event should happen, it won't be because of Moore's lawsuit. It will be because, like Moore, the next poor sap will realize that some asshole robbed him of a quantifiable sum of money and he has recourse to get it back. I'm pretty sure that's what lawsuits were designed to do in the first place.

(Also, as Sportswriter Paul asked me, is anyone stateside wringing his hands about a spate of future lawsuits being brought on by this? Actually, hold the phone — has anyone even heard of this?)

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