OTTAWA – The CBSC said today it found nothing wrong with a sports talk radio broadcast where one commentator suggested NHL goalies could curl with fellow hockey players heads.
At issue was the April 4, 2008 edition of Prime Time Sports, a radio show on The Fan 590 in Toronto which is also broadcast on Sportsnet Ontario, where a viewer believed one of the broadcasters, Jim Kelley, was glorifying on-ice violence.
The commentators were discussion the previous night’s NHL hockey game between the Ottawa Senators and Toronto Maple Leafs, and, in particular, a hit by Mark Bell on Daniel Alfredsson. When asked whether he thought it was a “dirty hit”, commentator Jim Kelley facetiously suggested that he “loved it”, was “waitin’ for his head to roll all the way down the ice,” and, “I thought maybe the two goalies would pick. One guy could get the head, one could get the helmet and they could curl.”
He went on to say that it was a head blow, but such incidents would continue to be deemed a “legal hit” due to the “mindset” of the NHL on the issue. In Kelley’s view, such hits would continue to occur until such time as an injured player sued the NHL and won.
The complaining viewer instead thought the comment advocated and glorified such violence.
The CBSC Panel concluded that the commentary did not violate any broadcast code provision.
“In the matter at hand, the mitigation was clearly present, within seconds of the original challenged words. The commentator, Jim Kelley, was expressing his frustration with the sport, and with the fact that, until a player dies or the National Hockey League is successfully sued for billions of dollars, ‘you cannot change the mindset of hockey on this’,” reads the release.
“The Panel is comfortable that anyone who listened to the 240 words of the entire comment would not likely have believed that Kelley loved the hit, as he began his observation. Indeed, he did appear to the Panel to have hated the illegal elbow to the head. It is fair to observe that he might have chosen less graphic language to make his point, but there is no breach resulting from that editorial choice. In the end, the Panel believes that this was a strong anti-violence statement.”
