Seattle's "Winning By Committee" Succeeds Through Toughness, Not Goonery

Editor's Note: The Hockey News has declared this "Enforcers Week." Each THN team site has been tasked with naming their top-5 all-time fighters. 

But the Seattle Kraken are, y'know, just two seasons old, in an era which has devalued enforcers. So instead, my contribution below is intended as a respectful counterpoint.

I'm not going to try and convince you celebrating "enforcers" is an outdated idea, given what we now know. I'm going to let two former enforcers do it for me.

"A hockey enforcer accepts the fact he's living on the edge of lunacy. But on some nights, the insanity went beyond the borderline."

Allan Globensky: "I Knew Where The Pills And Vodka Were."

The "edge of lunacy" quote above is from Allan Globensky's autobiography, A Little Knock Won't Hurt Ya! My Life As A Hockey Enforcer. Allan spent parts of three seasons in the mid-1970s with the Quebec Nordiques of the WHA.

He scored one regular-season goal for the Nordiques, and one more in the playoffs. But then, he wasn't in the lineup to score goals. He was hired to inflict punishment - which meant also absorbing punishment. "My memory is shot. I take 15 pills a day," Globensky told me on an episode of my Hockey Time Machine (HTM) podcast.

One newspaper columnist wrote, "Like a slave with chains around his neck, Globensky puts on an act from one arena to another. He's forced to do this, to earn a living." Allan said, "It didn't bother me when I was playing. When I was young and hearing my name chanted, my ego was as big as a house."

But it became clear in Quebec that he would be allowed one role only. "I said to the coach, 'You put me out there, you want me to fight. When I get out of the penalty box, I'm back on the end of bench and I don't get out anymore.'"

Globensky said the worst was October 18, 1975, when Nordiques management sent him down to minor-league Lewiston, Maine, knowing he would get ambushed by an opposing team. 

Eight seconds after he stepped on the ice, "I'm getting hit from both sides and the back. I go down, basically unconscious." 

As you'll hear in the clip below, he later learned the opposing team had put a $200 bounty on his head.

Allan Globensky's lifetime hockey statistics, which you won't find in any database: 90 fights, at least 60 concussions. You may fall ill just reading the toll it took on both his brain and body.

"Everything was starting to blow up in my mind. I was a sex addict, an alcoholic, a drug addict, a gambling addict. I couldn't focus. I was depressed. I was suicidal for at least two years. I knew where the pills and vodka were." His physical health wasn't any better. "My body was falling apart. I can't walk straight. I'm not allowed to drive. I've had arthritis everywhere." Marriages dissolved, too.

"Fortunately, I had two doctors who recognized I had some big-time head problems. I’ve got loving people around me. It keeps me on a level playing field.” 

Jim Thomson: "I Was Living In A Horror Movie."

As an offensively-gifted 14-year-old playing Junior B, Jim Thomson was cross-checked, then challenged to fight by a much larger 20-year-old.

What Thomson's antagonist didn't know was that Jim had already survived an upbringing full of "alcohol, drugs, and crime," as the youngest of ten children. "Having older brothers who were bikers and tough guys, they taught me protective instincts."

Jim knocked out the bully. "Next thing you know, I had a reputation," Thompson said on my HTM podcast. "A jolt of fear went through my body, because guys were going to be looking, 'Who's this kid?'"

That reputation got Thomson drafted by Washington in 1984. Though he believed 195 PIMs at AHL Binghamton was a robust total, Capitals coach Bryan Murray told Thomson, "If you want to make our team, you're going to have to fight more."

The next year, Thomson obliged - fighting seven times in one weekend. For the season, he recorded 41 AHL fights, 360 PIMs - and a callup by the Capitals. "I hated fighting," Jim recalled. "But I would do anything to live out my dream."

The unending treadmill of fights drove Thompson to unhealthy coping mechanisms, as he relates in the clip below.

Thomson got to know legendary enforcer Bob Probert when both served as extras in Mike Meyers’ movie, The Love Guru. "I would talk to him about the stress and my abuse," Thomson said. "He'd start laughing at me. 'I'm heavyweight champion of the league, and every time I go in a game, some young guy wants to fight me to make a name for himself.' We both had our demons, and shared a lot of dark stories."

In 2011, three enforcers were suspected of taking their own lives: Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien, and Wade Belak. When Thomson came out publicly and said, "The enforcer role is killing these people," Don Cherry on Hockey Night In Canada called Jim, "A puke, turncoat, and hypocrite."

Thomson knew better, suffering the consequences of eight documented concussions. "Guys are so big and strong, you get hit square in the skull, it's going to leave long-term damage. I was living in a horror movie. I was very close to suicide three times."

Despite non-stop ringing in his ears, Thomson continues to speak at clinics and charity events as a passionate anti-fighting advocate. Now 16 years sober, he also gets recruited for substance abuse interventions that save lives. "I talked to Wade Belak. I talked to Bobby Probert. We all lived with the same anxiety and fear. We did a job, we were proud of the job we did. But we hated it."