Now That Quinn Has Been Expelled, What About the Canucks?

I’m concerned that many people may be approaching the National Hockey League’s latest travails with the wrong frame of mind. I mean, this is to laugh, people. If you aren’t reading about Pat Quinn’s premature contract with the Vancouver Canucks in between Doonesbury and Bloom County, then you haven’t been paying attention for the last 20 years.

Ice hockey is a fast and beautiful sport and the people who play it are talented athletes. But the NHL seems to be run by the producers of “Animal House.” Why these people aren’t out somewhere buying hammers for the Pentagon is beyond me.

These are the people who have let the sport’s potential for violence become its single most salient characteristic. These are the people who tacitly agree that the rules will be suspended in the last five minutes of every game so as to allow as much fouling as the two teams deem advisable with the explanation that they “don’t want the referee deciding the game.”

These are the people who opposed helmets because they were afraid they would “ promote violence.” These are the people who watch films each season of players climbing into the stands to attack fans and then marvel that the Mayor of Boston is threatening criminal sanctions for violence against them.

But, if you weren’t sure before that the NFL Board of Governors couldn’t govern mud-wrestling in Death Valley, the Quinn-Canucks affair will prove it to you. So far, NHL President John Ziegler’s handling of the problem has been less reminiscent of Kenesaw Mountain Landis than of Pa Kettle.

In the first place, you don’t expel someone from hockey and then have an investigation. You want Quinn out pending a solution of the problem? Fine. Suspend him. But, if you go around expelling people from the sport prior to an investigation, you could end up making millionaires of both them and their lawyers.

In the second place, you have two culprits here: Quinn and the Canucks. Last time I looked, co-conspirators were considered equally culpable in both the U.S. and Canada. Quinn has been expelled, probably to the glee of the lawyers who’ll handle his suit for damages. What about the Canucks?

Don’t get me wrong. If Quinn did what he is alleged to have done, he’ll richly deserve the villainy Ziegler has prematurely heaped upon him. But, if we’re going to punish Leopold, we can’t very well ignore Loeb.

Unless, as seems the case, we’re in for laughs. I mean, if they are playing it straight, Quinn and Ziegler--both of whom have attended law school--couldn’t have botched it this badly. Could they?

WILLIAM W. BEDSWORTH

Mission Viejo

Bedsworth , a judge of the Orange County Superior Court, has been a Kings’ season ticket-holder for 13 years.