In hockey-speak, the word enforcer is often used as a euphemism for a more derogatory term: goon. These are players whose raison d’etre is to intimidate and fight, not to dazzle with their stick-handling, skating, passing, or shooting. One fan’s enforcer is another fan’s goon. You get the idea.
As the news copy desk’s resident hockey fanatic, I often was asked to edit Bruins stories that appeared in the A section during the team’s dramatic run to the Stanley Cup title last spring. This was a labor of love. The reports were compelling, peppered with wit, the observations almost always spot-on.
Game 3 of the Stanley Cup final proved pivotal. Vancouver came to Boston leading the series two games to none. In the first period, Canuck Aaron Rome rocked Bruin Nathan Horton with an open-ice hit. Neither player would skate again in the final, Horton because of a concussion, Rome because of a suspension. The inspired Bruins roared back to win the series in seven games.
In his report after Game 3, a writer, perhaps sickened by the hit, referred to Rome as a goon. I removed the apposition.
A colleague who read the column for the final time before it was printed questioned that decision as deadline bore down on him like Milan Lucic on a wandering goalie. A versatile, vigilant teammate (think Patrice Bergeron), my colleague instinctively did what the Bruins center would have done had he opted to pursue a career in the far less lucrative field of journalism and found himself in our slot editor’s shoes: He did some quick fact-checking, and within a few clicks discovered that Rome had scored merely two goals and had accumulated 111 penalty minutes in his NHL career.
