Everyone is making way too big a deal over Capitals’ Garnet Hathaway spitting

If you need further proof as to how screwed up hockey is, look no further than this.

During the closing seconds of the second period on Monday night, the matchup between the Capitals and Ducks descended into a free-for-all as Washington’s Brendan Leipsic leveled Anaheim’s Derek Grant with a bone crushing hit.

Players from both sides got into it along the boards, hitting and punching like in any good hockey brawl.  The star of the melee was the Capitals Garnet Hathaway who first took down Grant with a brutal punch to the jaw.  As retribution, the Ducks Erik Gudbranson tussled with the forward and then, as refs worked to separate the two,  delivered a sucker punch to Hathaway’s jaw.  Hathaway retaliated by….spitting in his face.

If you’re at all familiar with hockey and it’s strict (but seemingly arbitrary) code of conduct, there are certain things that are just not done, and spitting at an opponent is apparently one of them.  For his actions, Hathaway received a match penalty and was ejected from the game and could face further discipline from the league.

In a game where punching people in the face is lauded as an act of manly virtue, tossing a loogie elicited an intense round of moral hand wringing and condemnation.

“That’s about as low as you dig a pit, really,” Gudbranson, the guy who threw a sucker punch, told reporters after the game. “It’s a bad thing to do. It’s something you just don’t do in a game, and he did it.”

The Ducks’ Grant also weighed in on the matter, with a flare for hyperbole.

“At the end of the day, it’s probably the least respectful thing you can ever do to somebody,” Grant said.  “That’s a tough one to swallow.”

The Capitals own head coach Todd Reirden also threw Hathaway under the bus.

“It’s something that there’s no place for in the league,” he said.

No one, sadly, threw up their hands and said, “Honestly, I don’t see what the big deal is, stuff happens.”

After the game, Hathaway even apologized for his behavior, though stopping short of admitting that he technically spit on Gunbranson.

“I reacted a little emotionally. Unfortunately spit came out of my mouth after I got sucker punched and it went on to him,” Hathaway said.

Hathaway’s public flogging for a minor transgression comes just a day after NHL refs left Colorado’s Matt Calvert bleeding on the ice after he took a puck to the head, because the rule book demanded it. There is no sense to the way the game is played sometimes, and the uproar over the Hathaway spitting incident just throws it into sharp relief.

The lesson here is that physicality–the brutal, destructive kind that can lead to concussions or worse, is part and parcel of the game, and to be celebrated as such.  Spitting, which doesn’t do a lot of lasting harm, is a serious character flaw that needs to be eradicated from the game.

Hockey leans heavily on a subjective code, but the truth is, all rules are arbitrary and only reflections of what we, as a society or as a sport really value. In hockey, raw physicality rules above all else.  Hand wringing over manners and decorum, as if that somehow helps refine the game, is hypocritical at best. Sure, spitting is gross.  But to pretend that it’s objectively worse than punching someone in the head is just plain ridiculous.