WORCESTER—Pro hockey without fighting is like a weekend in Maine without lobster rolls.
Good, but could be better.
That aspect of the game was driven home last Friday when Jimmy Bonneau showed up at the DCU Center to do some scouting for the San Jose Sharks.
Bonneau does not make the Top Ten in any official Worcester pro hockey category, but is near the top in popularity. He is probably the all-time leader in money raised for charity by auctioning off special jerseys.
Through the years, and this is not a coincidence, the biggest bids on those charity auctions usually go to the players with the most fighting majors. For the four seasons from 2011-12 until the Sharks moved to California, that was Bonneau.
Fighting majors, and those who accumulate them, are on their way to becoming the Tyrannosaurus Rexes of the game. That’s for better or for worse — mostly worse.
Bonneau talked about that Friday night.
“I miss it,” he said of fighting. “It’s been assessed so much, but some time you have anticipation of what might happen, and I think people were coming into buildings and their team had more of an identity, more of a rivalry, and that I really miss because that brought the fire to the rink.
“With the Sharks, we were good at creating rivalries. We didn’t win a lot, but we found a way to make rivalries and make it fun.”
There has been this undercurrent of thought, mostly in the United States, that fighting in hockey has some insidious effect on the population that leads to a breakdown of law and order.
This is ridiculous. Fighting is a by-product of Canadian hockey, pro and junior, not American or European. A rational person can argue that Canada is one of the world’s most peaceful societies, Canadians among the most welcoming of the planet’s citizens.
Hockey is hockey, not life, and a lot of people enjoy the Bad, Bad Leroy Browns of the world.
“I’m saying this with knowing all the importance of health, and all we know about that, and everything is true,” Bonneau said, “but there is something about an aspect like violence, blood, that will always get people out of their seats. Emotion will rise out of it; it’s a factor.
“It’s like NASCAR. You want to see ‘em crash.”
Fighting was not what made Bonneau so popular off the ice, though. He never had a bad day at the rink, or when dealing with fans, like so many of the game’s tough guys. Take the Railers’ Yanick Turcotte for instance. After Eric Lindquist’s untimely death, Turcotte drove all the way down from Quebec City to Worcester to be there for Railers’ celebration of Lindquist’s life.
Friday night for the Railers match was Bonneau’s first time inside the DCU Center since his last game with the Sharks in 2015. He has relocated to the area — Bonneau now lives in Boston, a suburb of Worcester — and spent a night here the day before he moved into his new home.
“I felt butterflies coming back into the city,” he said. “I loved my four years here. It changed my life. I showed up here at 26, and I wasn’t a guy who was dominant in the American League at 20 or 21, but as far as expanding my personality, my role, really being myself, that was probably my prime time.
“And then the way the community was and the relationship that grew from that, and the personalities of Eric and (coach) Roy Sommer — everything fit very well.”
Bonneau played one more season in the ECHL after the Sharks left town, then the Sharks hired him as a scout. Between then and now he spent four years as an assistant to Sommer with the Barracuda. At 38, Bonneau has been off the ice for seven years but still misses putting on the uniform.
“There is nothing close to playing the game,” he said, “but you can’t do that forever. There’s a reason it ended at 31. You need to learn to be happy with what’s second-best.”
During the Sharks’ last season here, Bonneau wore a couple of different hats, so to speak. He was their tough guy, he was an occasional assistant coach to Sommer and on Jan. 21, 2015, he dressed as the backup goalie in Portland with the team facing a goaltender shortage.
“In Portland,” he said, “I was the second-most scared person in the building besides Roy, that I was gonna have to play in that game. Roy was telling me — we just need you to give us time to find a goalie.”
Worcester won that game, 3-2, with J.P Anderson in net.
The backup goalie thing turned out to have a happy ending, just like Bonneau’s visit here Friday night.
Bill Ballou covered the Red Sox for the Worcester Telegram from 1997 through 2018. He has covered pro hockey in Worcester since 1994 and currently does a weekly column for the Worcester Red Sox. Ballou can be reached at vetgoalie@aol.com
