National Post

Dave Bidini: It’s not always the best game you can name
This summer, two hockey players died: a record body count. People will tell you that these deaths were the result of fighting and concussions, and the damage suffered while playing a savage sport. All of this is true, but both players were also emotionally troubled, suffering bleak endings to a kind of life that many of us hold in wonder. We may view the terrible demise of Derek Boogaard, the New York Rangers enforcer who died in May, and Rick Rypien, the recent Vancouver Canuck and intended Winnipeg Jet who died earlier this week, as fall from graces. But this is to assume that grace exists — or is encouraged to exist — in a culture that is rarely blamed whenever a player slips off the Earth. How many songs, poems, open-line laments, sports-talk post-mortems or morning columns must we voice before we study that culture for what it really is? How many stories about dead hockey players do we have to tell before they stop dying? (Don Healy/Regina Leader-Post)