Krys Barch got on his Twitter soapbox to speak about the NHL lockout. Steve Mitchell-US PRESSWIRE
The New Jersey Devils‘ Krys Barch, who has also been with Dallas and Florida over the course of his career, has a Twitter account and used it on the night of Sept. 29 to vent his frustrations about the NHL lockout. Here is the full text of his speech, edited for clarity by Mike Halford of ProHockeyTalk:
I sit here from Grand Bend, Ontario putting a pen to my heart and writing on paper what bleeds out. My name is Krys Barch. I have played approx. 5 ½ years in the NHL and have worked for every second of it. I Haven’t been a 1st round pick, bonus baby or a son of a hall of famer. I have made it through sweating, bleeding, cut Achilles, broken hands, concussions, broken orbital bones, 8 teeth knocked out, etc, etc, etc.
I sit in front of a fire, 8 OV deep and starting a bottle of Porte that will assist in the translations of my emotions into words! No different than a truck driver, farmer or line worker I have a shot and a beer. Not to deal with the days ahead but to ease the nerves from what my body has endured the days before.
I sit here with both my boys sleeping and my wife due with our 3rd. My thoughts racing on what I can conquer tomorrow to get our family ahead. Some times wonder if I should have existed when a word and a gun solidified and solved all problems. I feel the Wild West would more simplified than the world we live in now whet an employer who makes billions of dollars and a league with record revenues can tell me that I can’t do the things that my heart tells my me to do!
All what my heart tells me to do far surpasses what my body has endured. As I write this I dive deeper and deeper into my bottle of Porte giving wider views to the depths of my heart. As my pen warms from the fire, Neil Young and a fall Canadian night, I wonder how this work stoppage effects the owners?
I wonder if the owners of Boston, New York, Washington etc, etc, have endured any of the injuries that I or any other player in the NHL have endured. Still they probably sit there smoking the same brand of cigar, sipping the same cognac, and going on vacation to one of the five houses they own…While we sit here knowing they want to take 20% of our paychecks.
One half to 3/4 of my peers will have to work for the next 50 years of their lives. Congratulations to the lucky select few that I have played with who have made salaries that they can choose to do whatever they want when they are done. But I have played most who do not!
If the NHL wants to teams in the south or struggling markets then the players along with the financially well to do teams need to start working together. Or they need to start to move the teams to the North where they will make money. The system allows the owners to continually take money from the players contract after contract where eventually over 40 some years the owners will have 80% of revenue. The only way to stop the work stoppages long into the future is fix the root cause of the problems.
The lockout is a procedure to take from the players to pay for the NHL mistakes. Let’s not allow the NHL to make any more mistakes. Let the league and the players come together to fix the mistakes that have been made and make sure none are made in the future. Let’s get a deal where the owners, players, and fans benefit from. Where we can be sitting around in beautiful Canadian falls around a fire playing and watching the game we love. Here’s to the truth and our next conversation. As always speaking from my heart! Goodnight! Like me or hate me I speak what comes from my heart!
It’s easy for fans to sympathize with Barch, who is frustrated that he is not allowed to do his job right now. He makes a good point about the fact that many players do not rake in the big bucks over the course of their careers, plus they have a limited time to play anyway because of natural physical limitations.
He also raises cogent points about the class differences between the players and the owners. Let’s not forget Jim Devellano characterizing players–and himself–as cattle on the owners’ ranches recently. Class, salaries and livelihoods have been big parts of lockout discussion since long before Sept. 15.
However, there are some worrying things to look at here.
Barch makes multiple references to his drinking while writing his tweets and excuses it by saying many other people in different fields do it too. That’s all well and good, but considering that three other enforcers (Rick Rypien, Derek Boogaard, Wade Belak) died last summer from troubles amplified by substance abuse, this could be worrisome for Barch. Remember that a posthumous exam of Boogaard’s brain revealed he had chronic traumatic encepalopathy, which is associated with histories of concussion and head injuries. CTE can lead to memory loss, confusion, aggression and depression in those who suffer it, but can only be diagnosed after death.
I’m not saying Barch can’t drink and tweet–lots of people do, of course–but I am merely wondering if things are okay with him. He sounds like he is going through a lot of stress: his wife is pregnant and he’ll soon start missing paychecks. if this lockout lasts. He could be going through things that he’s not letting on about and that could be worsening his outlook.
But when he starts pining for the Wild West, for a time when guns and words solved problems, that should raise a red flag. In this day and age of increased gun violence, with some recent instances committed by people who were recently fired or otherwise experienced a less than ideal change to their employment status, it shows that guns don’t solve problems so much as they create tragedies and exacerbate other problems.
Barch’s frustration is understandable on many levels, but it is worrying that he feels gun violence would be a more ideal way to solve a labor dispute. Before painting him as some sort of folk hero speaking for hockey fans everywhere and agreeing completely with what he said, though, remember the people who have died recently in the name of someone using guns in an attempt to solve problems in their lives.
