Golbez's Latest Rant Makes A Difference

Jes Golbez likes to rant. Usually his rants are about hockey, and usually they are entertaining and informative.

Once in a while Golbez likes to go off topic, like when he recently tore a strip off the non-believers of global warming.

Golbez stopped just short of naming an official charity, but I do believe Golbez's environmental rant qualifies him as a hockey blogger Making A Difference. Others are:

Greatest Hockey Legends.com supports Canadian National Institute for the Blind
Hockey Book Reviews.com supports Canadian Library Association
On The Forecheck supports Kiva.org
Kukla's Korner supports the Jeffrey Thomas Hayden Foundation
Scotty Hockey supports the Leukemia & Lymphona Society
Going Five Hole supports the Mario Lemieux Foundation

Speaking of Making A Difference, one man who did was Pat Hannigan. Hannigan played 182 games in the NHL with Toronto, NY Rangers and Philadelphia. He was a minor league star, notably with the Buffalo Bisons. Many fans will better remember him by his second career as a broadcaster with the Buffalo Sabres, serving as Ted Darling's colorman for a decade.

But in Fort Erie, Ontario where Hannigan lived he may better "be known his social justice efforts, helping refugees new to Canada through Casa el Norte, a safe house for newcomers."

Hannigan passed away on Wednesday. He was 71.

Making A Difference - Following Up

It's been just shy of a week since I challenged the hockey blogosphere to Make A Difference.

My premise is that there are many great hockey bloggers and hockey writers out there, and collectively we reach significant readership numbers. Why don't we reach out to our loyal readers and give back some. I adopted the Canadian National Institute for the Blind as my charity of choice, and explained why. I challenged other bloggers to do the same.

Checking up on the other blogs, so far I know of three that have answered the challenge, with a fourth working on their project.

The first to answer the call was our Nashvillian friend Dirk at On The Forecheck. Dirk is enlightening his readers to Kiva.org, which is "a charitable organization that helps facilitate one of the most promising international anti-poverty measures we've ever seen." You can read all about it on the two previous links.

George James Malik answered the challenge on behalf of Kukla's Korner. George is a big supporter of the Jeffrey Thomas Hayden Foundation, an Ohio based non-profit group dedicated to helping kids with cancer.

Scotty over at Scotty Hockey informs me he has long supported the Leukemia & Lymphona Society to fight blood cancers. Scotty Hockey has no advertising, not even Google Ads. Instead he wants any monies directed towards his charity of choice.

Going Five Hole has chosen the Mario Lemieux Foundation, obviously a charitable body to help the fight against cancer. Great choice there Sean!

I intend to keep pestering bloggers until we have a fuller representation of the blogosphere adopting a charity, and Making A Difference.

Hockey Bloggers Can Make A Difference

I absolutely cringe every time I see a player suffer a serious eye injury. It is probably the scariest injury in all of hockey.

High sticks and flying pucks to face happen all too often in hockey. Name dropping could be an endless task, but here's just a few examples.

Some of the luckier players to get away with "only" suffering diminished vision include Bryan Berard, Mattias Ohlund, Steve Yzerman, Saku Koivu, Anders Hedberg, Kevin Smyth, Phillippe Boucher, and, depending on what doctors say in the coming weeks, Colin White.

Others have lost their careers to eye injuries. Players such as Al MacInnis, Pierre Mondou, Jeff Libby, Ryan McGill, Mark Deyell, Hector Marini, Jamie Hislop, Jean Hamel, and Glen Sharpley.

Bylaw 12:6 of the National Hockey League forbids players who are sightless in one eye from playing in the NHL. It states that players with one eye, or 3/60ths of normal vision, shall not be eligible to play for a member club. Loss of 75 percent of sight in an eye is required for insurance to take effect.

The regulation became known as the "Trushinski Bylaw" because of a major leaguer named Frank "Snoozer" Trushinski who played right defense for the Kitchener Greenshirts. According to NHL officials at the time, Trushinski lost sight in one eye due to a high stick in 1921. He came back and lost most of the sight in his other eye after fracturing his skull in another accident. The NHL didn't want that to risk having its players lose their eye sight and they didn't want to pay the high insurance costs, so they created Bylaw 12:6

Mrs. Trushinski once recalled her husband's problems several years after he died:

"A year or so before he lost his eye, his skull was fractured in a game against the Toronto Granites hockey team. He got along seeing, but not too well."

"All his life he had a film on his left eye, so he really had trouble after the puck hit his right eye; that was during a game in 1921 when a puck hit the eye. He never saw out of it again. He was able to work a long time, though, for Schneider's, a meat company in Kitchener, Ontario."

The Trushinski Bylaw became important in March 1939 when Toronto Maple Leafs left winger George Parsons lost his left eye in an injury during an NHL game at Maple Leaf Gardens against the Chicago Black Hawks.

"NHL president Frank Calder told me that I couldn't play in the NHL again" said Parsons, who was 25 at the time of forced retirement. "Calder said that the NHL governors wouldn't allow one eyed players in the league because of the Trushinski precedent. Calder said the NHL didn't want that happening again."

The ruling was challenged in June 1975 when forward Greg Neeld was drafted by the Buffalo Sabres of the NHL. Neeld had lost sight in one eye while playing amateur hockey in 1973.
Neeld felt he could play with his specially designed helmet, featuring the first visor in hockey, nicknamed the Neeld Shield. Neeld's lawyer Roy McMurtry threatened to sue the NHL when Neeld was kept out of the league because of the Trushinski Bylaw.

NHL governors voted 13-3 (with two abstentions) to continue to bar one-eyed players from the league. The league felt that it could not afford to insure Neeld and that his special helmet could cause injury to other players. Neeld ended up playing in the WHA, which did not bar one-eyed players.

As far as I understand it, the Trushinski Bylaw still exists, but it has been successfully challenged. The NHL changed its policy and allowed Bryan Berard to play. The difference here is advances in medical technology. Berard had been fitted with a special contact lens that gave him more sight than Neeld ever had.

I don't really want to weigh in on the mandatory visor rule debate. I understand the desire for choice, although I would think a grandfathered clause forcing all newcomers to the league to wear a protective shield.

Eye injuries and illnesses are of great concern to me. I suffer from glaucoma, a degenerative disease that unfortunately I've been forced to become an expert on. The loss of sight hits kind of close to home for me.

With that in mind, GreatestHockeyLegends.com like to take this time to announce the adoption of Canadian National Institute for the Blind as my official charity of choice.

I'm not going to ask you to donate any money, as that is your prerogative. I'm adopting a charity of choice more so to spread information and education about eye injuries and illnesses, and to inform about the services out there for people who may need it.

I'm also doing this because I believe hockey bloggers can make a difference. There's a number of top quality hockey blogs out there that have a significant and loyal following of readers. I'd like to think we as a blogging community can dig a little deeper than hockey and help out in a bigger cause that we believe in.

That's why I'm going to challenge other hockey bloggers to adopt a charity of their choosing. You don't have to put up a big story as to why you have chosen the charity you have, but somewhere on the main page of your blog I'd like to see some form of link or advertisement of a charity that you support.

Because hockey bloggers can make a difference.