The one-time Bruins player and longtime Bruins coach spoke out against Andrew Ference over the weekend, criticizing the defenseman for being honest about a situation.
"You do not — I don't care if your teammate is an ax murderer — what you got to say to the guy is you [go to him] in the dressing room and tell him that it was a dirty hit," Cherry said during his Coach's Corner segment on CBC.
The thoughts of Cherry represent the old culture of the NHL, one the league is better off without. It's fitting that it's being applied to a hit that's perhaps most representative of the new thought process in hockey.
That hit came from Daniel Paille, who leveled Raymond Sawada, who had his head down, in Boston last week. In previous years, Paille might not have even received a minor penalty, but it was exactly the type of hit the league is trying to remove from the game altogether. Accordingly, Paille was suspended four games.
While the hit was illegal by the new letter of the law, it wasn't dirty. With that being the absolute reality of the situation, that's what Ference said.
"I mean, it's a bad hit, right?" Ference said after that game. "That's what they're trying to get rid of. You can't be a hypocrite and complain about it when it happens to you and say it's fine when your teammate does it. It is a [hit to the] head that they're trying to get rid of. … I just talked to Danny and he feels bad. It's tough. That backchecking forward, to make those kinds of hits now, it's so hard to do it in a clean fashion with the new rules. It is what it is. He hurt the guy and I'm sure he'll have a little conversation [with the league]."
What Ference said was far from inflammatory, yet it sent Cherry into an unjustified tirade against Ference. He went so far as to peg Saturday's 2-0 loss to the Sharks on Ference's shoulders.
"I'd hate to be in that dressing room right now. You see what happened [Saturday], 2-0," Cherry said. "That brings your dressing room down — when you have a guy in the dressing room talking about your own players and know he's going to get suspended."
What Cherry said isn't wild, nor should anyone get too up in arms about it. Cherry is one of the best and most entertaining figures in a sport that doesn't have enough starpower, and his opinions always get people talking.
He's far from alone, too. Even Claude Julien couldn't help but note last week that Sawada put himself in a dangerous position by not looking where he was skating. Cherry put things more succinctly, saying, "Look at him with his head down, like a dum-dum."
That being said, if a player can't see things fairly and can't state things as they are, then the game will never truly eliminate the culture of unnecessary violence. While Ference will catch flak from the old-timers (and even Paille himself), he deserves credit for sticking out his neck. Bill Guerin did the same after Matt Cooke knocked out Marc Savard last year, and Ference doing the same for a hit much more acceptable in the "old league" provides a positive sign that, much like the NFL, head trauma can become a much smaller problem in the NHL.
