Tie Domi wrings his hands, flexes his fingers, studies his thickened knuckles.
Yet again, he's been asked to comment on the violent death of a hockey player — although this one a generation removed from the NHL — and, by whatever process of selection, Domi has become the deliverer of black crepe-edged eulogies in the Maple Leaf dressing room.
But Domi, as he stresses, never knew Keith Magnuson. He hardly even knows about Keith Magnuson, has no memory of him.
That comes as a jolt to those of who did watch Magnuson play for the Chicago Blackhawks, which feels like just the day before yesterday.
The thing is, Domi and Magnuson are cut from the same rough-woven cloth: fierce, hard-nosed, pugnacious. Fighters. Indeed, Magnuson still holds the Blackhawks team record for penalty minutes in a career, with 1,442. I will venture Magnuson took no shame in those numbers.
Of course, fighting was nothing to feel self-conscious about in Magnuson's era. He retired at about the same time the NHL started to become formally disapproving of fisticuffs, perceived in some image-preoccupied quarters as cheapening the sport, an element to be socially engineered out of the game. And if condemnation didn't work, there was always the instigator rule.
"Before the instigator rule, there used to be a lot of respect,'' Domi observes. "You knew when a guy was coming. There was no running and hiding and being protected by the league.''
In the new, more sophisticated, more duplicitous NHL, an enforcer has to be clever rather than forthright, assess the opportunities, or risk getting tossed. Unless two combatants are equally willing to drop the gloves.
Earlier this month, for example, the ever-game but awfully dumb Matthew Barnaby twice went mano-a-mano with Domi in one game. Domi swatted Barnaby silly.
He lifts his hands to show how the abrasions have healed. Further than that, he won't discuss the Barnaby escapades.
Domi is no fool. He rarely talks about fighting. Doesn't like even his teammates raising the subject of who might be on his fist-list.
The last time anyone tried it was some dozen years ago, a fellow Winnipeg Jet wondering if Domi was eyeballing a certain opponent that night. "I told him to go @*&%$ himself and never ask me that ^!@%#* question again.''
There is a tacit understanding around the league not to accentuate fighting. This is rather like not talking about the elephant in the room. Fighting — or the threat of it — is still quite central to how the game is played. Stars, the skilled elite, have to be protected.
As Domi notes: "Mats Sundin has never had an injury because of a cheap shot. I take a lot of pride in taking care of my teammates. Anybody tries it, they'll have to answer to me.''
Off the ice, Domi has learned the fine art of self-censorship. In any event, as a dad, it's an awkward subject. "Do you think it's something you want your kids to be proud of? That you're a fighter?''
Yet Domi is probably the most popular Leaf with other people's kids in this city.
What he won't be doing is participating in the hockey fighting tournament that a Winnipeg promoter announced earlier this week, Hockey Gladiators, or some such nonsense, with some 50 to 100 pugilists vying for cash and celebrity.
"No interest whatsoever,'' says Domi, rolling his eyes. "I think this is more of an insult than anything else. When we battle, we battle for a team, not for ourselves.''
He is not a dancing bear; his specialty — love it or hate it — is not a joke or eccentricity.
Domi hopes other league enforcers will shun the gladiator stunt but won't be surprised if they're lured by the money.
Of course, he could try beating some sense into them.
