Don Cherry wants to talk about Marty McSorley and class. Not about McSorley being a classy guy, a character guy – though Cherry feels he is – but about class distinctions. It's a few days before McSorley's assault trial in Vancouver, and I've called Cherry because he is the philosopher king of hard-knocks hockey. Not surprisingly, he says chat while McSorley made a terrible mistake when he slashed Donald Brashear on the side of the head, it's "nuts" to bring him before a judge on a criminal charge.

But Cherry's main point is the divide becween "hockey people" and people who just want to dump on the sport, using Marcy McSorley as an excuse. "Most of the media are leftwing and went to college," he says, his voice rising to become the familiar boom from the "Coach's Corner" segment of Hockey Night in Canada. "Most of the players and fans aren't that way. I think [the media] look down on us, consider us the great unwashed."

McSorley, a farm boy from Cayuga, Ontario, "represents old-time hockey, small-town hockey, and he's paying for it," Cherry summarizes. Not forgetting his stature as the only television personality in Canada who can silence noisy bars for six minutes on Saturday evenings while patrons listen to his unbuttoned commentaries, he adds, "And remember – if it hadn't been on TV, none of this would be happening."

Though we have never met, Don Cherry calls me by my first name and insists I do the same with him. We're Don and Charlie, chatting about Marty. Some of this is faux camaraderie. Some of it, though, has to do with establishing allegiances. Hockey guys don't put on airs. They don't pretend the sport is figure skating with sticks or that the players are all angels. And they sure don't bring in the law to settle their disputes.

But the law had stepped in, and shortly after McSorley was formally charged with assault with a weapon, British Columbia Attorney General Andrew Petter defended the decision.

"The criminal law does not end simply because the occurrence took place on an ice surface," he said. "The law is being applied here as it's applied in any other circumstance."

THE VANCOUVER PROVINCIAL COURTHOUSE squats in the heart of the city's notorious lower east side. On my way to the first morning of the trial in late September, I see a woman jab a needle into her neck and a man slap a baseball bat in his hand while his colleague negotiates with a junkie. A grey building of undistinguished architecture, the court is well aware of its prime location for both the commission and the prosecution of crime: the recessed entrance features a drop box for drugs and a door sheriff who wears black gloves and a nine-millimetre Smith & Wesson.

Professional hockey has, of course, been to court before. The infamous 1969 stick duel between Wayne Maki and Ted Green led to charges in Ottawa, and in 1988 Dino Ciccarelli was convicted of assault for clubbing an opponent over the head. Ciccarelli spent his few hours in Toronto's Don Jail signing autographs. What already seems different about McSorley is the pre-trial spin. This week in Vancouver won't simply determine if a player committed assault with a weapon during a game. Hooligan hockey, the enforcer code, the tactical use of violence within the NHL – all will be scrutinized under oath before a judge. Finally, goes the spin, the public good will be served.

Room 307, site for Regina v. McSorley, is on the third floor of the courthouse, well above the revolving-door chaos of the remand courts. The room is large and bright and has brown wood panelling and beige carpet. Sixty-odd seats are available for spectators.

Journalists have lined up since before dawn for those seats. Cameramen, barred from the courthouse, mill about on the sidewalk, pouncing on anyone entering or exiting in a power suit, or with hockey-player shoulders, on the off chance they are important.

McSorley stands between his defence team to answer the charge. "How do you plead?"

Judge William Kitchen asks. "Not guilty," Marty McSorley answers softly. Only then is he permitted to sit, his back to the gallery.

Parties in the trial share a single table facing the bench. There are McSorley and his lawyers Bill Smart and Jim Williams. Further down sit prosecutors Bill Hicks and Louise Krivel, the only woman who will speak in court during the next five days. All the men are slim and fit and attired in dark suits, sharp ties.

From behind, the shoulders alone betray which man might be capable of dropping an opponent with a single blow. The fabric of the lawyers' suits tends to bunch at the base of the neck. On the hockey player, the marerial is stretched tight, as though McSorley were wearing protective padding under his jacket.

Krivel, attired in her own power suit – an Ally McBeal dress, the cut severe – positions a TV monitor at an angle that allows most of the room to watch the Crown's key exhibit: an eighteen-minute video of parts of the Canucks-Bruins game from February 21, 2000.

On screen first is a brawl between McSorley and Brashear a couple of minutes into the opening period. McSorley instigates, but is pummelled by the younger, quicker player. I count eighteen punches landed on McSorley's head and upper body. Brashear then taunts him by dusting his hands dismissively. Not surprisingly, McSorley is soon seeking a rematch, using slashes and cross-checks as provocacion. According to the unwritten code that governs how tough guys interact, this is his right. But Brashear ignores the challenges. McSorley, whose team is already down 4-0, is so determined to fight he winds up earning a ten-minute misconduct.

More misdemeanors follow, including Brashear's falling on the Bruin goalie and razzing of their bench with a mocking gesture. In legal terms, the video is meant to establish a motive for the ensuing assault. In hockey terms, it is charting a clash between two tough guys who are not exactly reading from the same book.

Then comes the alleged crime. Find a Canadian who claims he or she hasn't seen a replay of the three-second incident at least once and you'll have a Canadian who would rather fib than admit to even a pass- ing knowledge of a sordid matter. Still, each time it is shown, the slash is a fresh, stomach-dropping shock.

No fewer than seven different camera angles are offered by the Crown. In each clip, Marty McSorley comes up behind Donald Brashear and two-hands him on the side of the head with his stick. In each, the Canuck topples backwards, as though he has run into an invisible pole. In each, his helmet, pushed up his head by the blow, cannot stop the back of his skull from cracking on the ice.

Pitiless courtroom eyes, including my own, watch McSorley watching the screen. He studies the monitor impassively, an elbow on the arm of the chair, chin in hand. During the break I introduce myself. His handshake is firm and his gaze is steady. He has blue eyes and rusty-blond hair and the features and tan of an ageing surfer. Notably absent are the scars you would expect from seventeen years of battles. When serious, as he is much of the week, Marty McSorley wears a mild, slightly sad expression, an effect heightened by a naturally downturned mouth. When he smiles, mostly for autograph seekers, he is as handsome as the movie stars, real or fake, who parade along Manhattan Beach, the Los Angeles suburb where he lives.

While courteous to anyone who approaches, McSorley isn't talking to the media. The lawyers aren't talking either. Other lawyers there, representing the NHL as observers, along with the powerful Bob Good- enow, head of the players' association, are vowing a week of stony silence too.

At lunch I call Mike Barnett in Los Angeles. Barnett, a Calgarian, is Marty McSorley's long-time friend and agent. I ask him if McSorley might agree to be interviewed for an article that won't run until the trial is over. Barnett seems open to the idea. We exchange coded pleas- antries. He attempts to discern if I am a hockey guy, or just another rider in the media posse gathering in Vancouver to hunt McSorley down. I attempt to stake some ground between the two positions. Barnett promises to speak with Marty. He also tells me to call him Mike, which I take as a positive sign.

The Crown, it is clear from the first day, is presenting a straightfor- ward case for intent.

Enraged by Brashear's behaviour, their argument runs, McSorley snapped. To prove assault, both *actus reus* and *mens rea* must be shown. The former derermines that the accused committed the act. The latter involves the intent to cause harm through that act, either wilfully or out of recklessness. Even if the prosecutor can't prove that McSorley planned to hurt Brashear, he can certainly show that McSorley swung the stick high, and hard.

Is Marty McSorley guilty? Like most people in the courtroom, I am assuming the slash was intentional. I am assuming that, sent onto the ice in the game's final moments with unspoken instructions to show his own team that he, at least, wasn't a quitter, McSorley found that Donald Brashear still wasn't going to grant him another fight. I am assuming McSorley felt, in effect, that he was failing at his job, lost his cool, and clocked the player he believed had shown him disrespect. I am also assuming he didn't intend to give Brashear a third-grade concussion or to have his own life forever changed by a momentary lapse of judgment.

I am assuming all this because the video seems unequivocal, and because of who McSorley is. He has two biographies. The first, and most incriminating, is that Marty McSorley is the third-most penalized player in NHL history. He gained a foothold in the pros in the mid-1980s by brawling, and remained an elite enforcer for a decade by combining solid play with intimidation. The suspension he received for the slash (twentythree regular-season games, plus the playoffs, the longest ever doled out, with no guarantee of reinstatement for the 2000-2OO1 season) was the seventh of his career.

But it is the other biography that is more telling. For a decade, Marty McSorley was a sports samurai, a warrior of moderate skill and great heart who dutifully served his master. That master was Wayne Gretzky. McSorley made sure the Great One could work his magic without fear of the cheap shot, first in Edmonton and then in L.A. (Gretzky asked that McSorley be included in the 1988 trade that sent him to Los Angeles.) Woe to anyone who crosschecked Gretzky in the back or even just caught him with his head down. McSorley might start doling our bruising bodychecks. He might drop his gloves.

Get a little physical with Wayne Gretzky and Marty McSorley would get very physical with you.

Critics of rough stuff call players like McSorley goons. Hockey guys refer to them as enforcers, born out of the mayhem of the early 197OS, an era captured by the movie Slap Shot. Coaches prefer the term "role player," although the exact nature of the role is generally left un- specified, allowing them to deny any chain-of-command responsibility if things turn nasty. For their ferocity and loyalty, these athletes have earned the praises of coaches and the paycheques of stars. In his prime, Marty McSorley earned $2 million a season.

Unlike many enforcers, though, McSorley also developed into an effective player. By 1993, the zenith of his career, he was ranked among the NHL's top defencemen, logging lots of ice time and posting solid stats. But then Gretzky moved on to St. Louis, and then New York. McSorley wound up bouncing around the league, playing for five teams in as many years. Coaches would sign him if they thought their squad needed experience and muscle. Younger guys would be gunning for him, but he would still fight them, even if he lost as often as he won. Injuries would further diminish his effectiveness – the night he hit Brashear he had a banged-up shoulder and a damaged wrist – but he played through the pain.

He had probably hung around a couple of years too long. "I guess I'm trying to write cheques my body can't cash," he admitted after the fateful game. Before falling silent, presumably at his lawyer's command, he made one other telling remark: "I'm in shock with what I did," Marry McSorley confessed to a reporter. "That's not the way I want to be remembered as a hockey player."

TUESDAY AFTERNOON AT THE courthouse, and a showdown looms. Donald Brashear is due on the witness stand. He and McSorley haven't been in the same room since February 21, and though no one is expecting fisticuffs, the air is expected to crackle wich hangover tensions. After the hit, McSorley tried contacting Brashear to repeat his abject public apologies. The Canuck rejected his overture. When prodded, he said he thought McSorley should be given a lifetime ban. Now the rumour is that Brashear, who is also on record saying he didn't want a trial, is a reluctant witness. If he shows any hostility it may be directed at Crown attorneys for hauling him ouc of the rink and into the court.

Then there is the issue of what Donald Brashear can tell Judge Kitchen. Other witnesses have reported that he was struck so hard he had a grand-mal seizure on the ice. They testified that he went into convulsions, his brain short-circuited, his eyes rolling in their sockets. For several minutes, they said, Brashear could not answer basic questions, such as whether or not he had a wife and child (he does), and that he muttered in English and French. He suffered headaches and memory loss and missed six weeks of play.

Others can testify to this, but Donald Brashear has acknowledged that he doesn't remember what happened.

Looking huge and powerful, more like a prizefighter than a left- winger, the 6 3, 227- pound. Brashear enters a hushed court and walks up the centre aisle, veering off to the witness stand a few feet from where McSorley is seated. His smile is as thin as the stubble on his chin and the shadow of hair on his shaven head.

To the question of what he recalls, Brashear replies in a monotone, his accent pronounced, "The only thing I remember is that I jumped on the ice with not much time left. Marty was put on the ice, too - that's about it." To the query from Crown prosecutor Mike Hicks as to whether he ever "consented to being struck in that manner," he replies, "No." Then Hicks stuns the room by informing the bench that he is finished with the witness.

Realizing that this may soon be over, I focus on any communication between the hockey players. Twice McSorley appears to seek eye con- tact with Brashear. Others who are present later claim the Canuck was receptive, but I don't notice it. Sure enough, Bill Smart's cross-examination is equally pithy. "You don't particularly want to be here, do you?" McSorley's principal lawyer asks. "No," Brashear replies again. "And you did not consent to being *deliberately* struck on the head?" Smart adds. "Exactly," he answers.

Then he is back down the aisle and out the door, his seven minutes of evident discomfort ended. As showdowns go, this is a bust, but at least the defence strategy is introduced: the slash was an accident. Its brevity aside, Brashear's testimony is fascinating. He has called the man accused of assaulting him by his first name. Every witness so far, in fact, from referees to doctors to coaches, has referred to the ath- letes as Marty and Donald, or Brash. Even Mike Hicks has fallen into this habit, amazingly, given that he calls Judge Kitchen "Your Honour" and Smart "my friend."

With Donald Brashear, his use of the first name is a giveaway; he is a hockey guy talking about a hockey thing. As far as he is concerned, this is a matter between "Donald" and "Marty," not "my friend" and "Your Honour." With the lawyers, the informality may be more telling. The court seems vulnerable to the charms of hockey talk. The judge entertains the room with shinny jokes, and volunteers that he is a Montreal Canadiens fan. Louise Krivel is a Canucks season-ticket holder. Even the priestly looking Hicks plays in an old-timers' league and has a reputation for courteous play.

Is the house of hockey in danger of invading the house of law? Marty McSorley will be testifying tomorrow morning, and he is known for his winning public manner. A command performance for the judge might tip the scales of justice. A command appearance from, say, the master at whose pleasure the warrior once served, could turn this court into a room full of lawyers and journalists even Don Cherry might feel he could talk to.

MCSORLEY IS ON THE STAND ALL OF Wednesday. Dressed in a blue suit and lightcoloured shirt, he projects confidence and probity, as though to tell less than the whole truth would be beneath his standards. Like many large men, he has learned to hold his upper rorso, that imposing wall of fabric and muscle, erect. Over time his stillness draws my at- tention to his hands, which are huge. When he smacks his fist into his palm to indicate the force of a check, I flinch.

His defence team introduces another video of the incident, taken by a Boston television crew. Those same three seconds are now slowed to single frames. Whac they show, claim his lawyers, is McSorley's stick sliding from Brashear's lowered shoulder – the intended target, we are given to understand, of a controlled slash designed to start a fight – and continuing up to his head. The footage, which someone quickly names "the grassy knoll" sequence in honour of the phantom shooter in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, causes a stir. I watch it over and over, and sometimes see the stick strike the shoulder first, and sometimes don't. "Did you think you were going to miss?" McSorley is asked.

"It never entered my mind," he replies.

(On viewing the video, a woman next to me in the gallery whispers "Garbage" and "They fixed the tape." Like Donald Brashear, the woman is black. Later she assures me that, because hockey is played mostly by white men, McSorley must be racist, and must have been acting out his racism on Brashear. Similarly, a man claiming a Quebecois background maintains that McSorley's Southern Ontario roots should be factored into why he hit a francophone player in that manner.) McSorley talks frankly about the job of the hockey enforcer. Though fighting "has to come from the heart," it is always strategic, done to kick-start a flat team or send a message to the opposition. Brawls be- tween tough guys – the only kind the code condones – are rarely per- sonal, and a first-rate "policeman" (the term he prefers) can keep his head throughout even the most combative of games.

"Donald," he grants, wasn't always playing by the rules that night in February. He taunted his opponent after beating him. He refused that same opponent a second chance. He also fell on the goalie, another serious breach. Still, McSorley maintains that he wasn't angry with the Canuck. Rather, he was "disappointed," as though Brashear had let him down.

So good is Marcy McSorley on the stand, it's easy to forget he is talking about men engaging in bare-knuckled fist fights, a brand of pugilism banned from boxing over a century ago. Easy to forget he is discussing behaviour in no direct way related to the playing of hockey. Easy, too, to forget that, regardless of the angle, the video still appears to be showing an act of extreme violence.

When Mike Hicks cross-examines him, McSorley is ready, challenging the prosecutor on his knowledge of how the game operates at the professional level. "You're being absolute," he says at one point, "and nothing is absolute on the ice." He even uses Hicks's own language to highlight the gap between what things signify in the rink versus what they represent outside it. The lawyer suggests that Brashear was "entitled" to stand in front of the Boston goaltender during a power play. Marty McSorley replies, "I question that entitlement." Hicks insists that surely a player is allowed to be in the slot. In the NHL, McSorley clarifies, only *certain* players are allowed. Scorers able to deflect shots, yes; enforcers inclined to hurt goalies, no.

Among the spectators who smile at that flinty exchange over code intricacies is a slight man seated in the first row of the gallery. He materiaiized in court after lunch, and he neither enters nor exits the chamber wich the rest of us. For much of the afternoon the man stares at the carpet, elbows on his knees, an expression of mild exasperation on his features. Wayne Greczky – a lawyer's body in a hockey player's suit – remains inside the room during the break, busy signing autographs for attorneys and clerks.

Having failed to goad McSorley, Hicks repeats his contention that the slash was intentional. "That is absolutely not true," the defendant answers, fixing his accuser with a man-to-man stare. "I got caught with an illegal stick in the Stanley Cup final and I didn't try and blame anybody. And today I came up here and swore an oath on the Bible."

That is the last word for the day, and it has gone to McSorley. In a nice role reversal, outside the courthouse the Great One runs in- terference for his old protector. A massive media scrum has assailed McSorley all week long, obliging him to plaster a smile on his face for thrusting cameras and microphones. This afternoon, the finesse player drives into the mob while the enforcer slips away, virtually unde- tected and certainly unharmed.

Sport, one journalist decides, has triumphed over law again today. Mc- Sorley could well be acquitted on the basis of his stellar testimony, plus a supersrar cameo appearance. But a lawyer who sat in on the proceedings isn't so sure. Judge Kitchen took almost no notes during the cross-examinacion, she tells me, suggesting he may not have found what McSorley said especially relevant.

That is surprising, for the new video seems to have introduced some doubt as to the defendant's motive. As relevant, though, is what McSorley has shown about himself on the stand. Besides defending the enforcer clan, he has pointedly not spread the blame for what happened. What were two tough guys doing on the ice in the final minute of a 5-2 game? Why does every team hire enforcers and why does the league condone it? How come no coach is ever required to issue aloud the sort of instructions that might make him an accessory to brutality, even to a crime? McSorley has acted as a good soldier for the code – a better one than Donald Brashear, he has hinted – and for the league.

On Friday morning Judge Kicchen corrects any misconceptions about whose house we are in and which rules apply. Closing arguments are presented, and with McSorley silent in his chair and Wayne Gretzky long gone from the city, the matter is once more assault, punishable by up to eigh- teen months in prison. The defence team sticks close to its argument of simple error. "Mr. McSorley just missed," Bill Smart summarizes. The Crown calls for conviction on grounds of intent and/or reckless behaviour.

Judge Kitchen announces that he will take a week to decide and adjourns the court. Marty McSorley's final scrum run is eased by a cold rain that has cameramen minding their footing on the pavement. As always, he stops to sign autographs and pose for photos with fans, many of them street people. He flies back to Los Angeles that same evening.

Before leaving Vancouver, I try Mike Barnett again. McSorley's agent queries me some more about whether I am the kind of journalist he can call by his first name. I tell him that I question whether the trial should have happened, but now that it has, the verdict may not go his client's way. I also say that I am interested in Marty McSorley himself.

What I don't offer is that I still suspect he meant Donald Brashear some kind of harm.

Mike takes my number down and says he'll ask Marty to give me a call.

"Charlie?" A voice over the phone asks late the following Tuesday night. "This is Marty, Marty McSorley." I am both surprised and pleased to hear from him. He asks the first question, about my area code. On learning that I live in Peterborough, we talk about junior hockey. (McSorley played in nearby Belleville.) He recently made a bid co-buy the Barrie Colts of the Ontario Hockcy League and would be happy to own a junior team.

"Nobody could hire and fire me then," he says. More seriously, he likes the idea of working with young athletes, helping to nurture "the whole person," rather than just the player. "I could do it with honesty and sincerity," he says, unprompted.

He is calling from his house south of Los Angeles. Living in the heart of the city would make a farm boy like him claustrophobic, he says. On Manhatten Beach he has the ocean outside his door and can jump on his bike or rollerblade along the beach. Though still a bachelor, he has dated the same woman for years. She is a professional beach-volleyball player. Marriage and family are finally on his mind.

Home, though, remains Cayuga, a farming community near Brantford, where Wayne Gretzky was raised. McSorley is one of eleven, with seven brothers and three sisters, and though he denies the McSorleys ever ranked wich the infamous Hunter boys, the clan had stature in the local rinks. "We stood up for each other," he says. He proudly lists the accomplishments of his siblings, several of whom played Canadian-university hockey.

Only his sister Maureen is still living in the town.

Last fall, when his father died, McSorley stayed in Cayuga for a month, trying to decide what to do about his injury-plagued body and dwindling career. (He settled on a one-year contract with the Bruins.) He hung out with high-school friends, playing shinny and oldtimers' hockey. Asked if he felt a distance from those friends, he is emphatic: "I'm no different from any of the other guys in my town," he says. "Suits and salary never make the man."

Being a certain sort of man seems important co Marty McSorley. Talk- ing with him this way is strange. He may recall shaking my hand, but otherwise I am no more than a voice in his receiver. I am also writ- ing a story about the trial, and, given the tenor of the media coverage, he would be quite within his rights to assume that I, too, have come to bury him.

Instead, he is open and friendly, asking only that certain remarks be kept private, at least for now. "I've tried not to let the trial consume me," he says without conviction. He discouraged his family from travelling to Vancouver in support. As for his testimony, he says, "I was comfortable talking about my role because I don't think it's a black eye on the game. Fighting isn't something people want to admit to. I'm not saying I'm proud of it, but you try doing the job with dig- nity and class."

He even confesses to doubts about the code he has played by all his life. "Mark Messier told me you have co make sure you don't become a hockey dinosaur," he says. "Maybe that's part of my problem." But he is also quick to point out that he kept certain things to himself last week, ensuring that the NHL wasn't dragged into the mess.

On February 21, in the dying seconds of the third period, Marty McSorley was on the ice, "trying to do something I've done many, many times before," he says.

He wants everyone to know chat he has been upfront about this, no matter what people are saying. I can feel him building his case with me, and would, under different circumstances, tell him there is no need. He isn't only on the verge of being found guilty of assault. Fairly or not, he will now be largely remembered for the swing of a stick destined to rank among the all-time notorious video sports clips, an awful fate for an ageing warrior.

I could ask him point-blank if he meant to hit Brashear, but I don't. He has spent the last hour telling me that quality of character is paramount to his self-definition, and for a man – even a man working a journalist in an interview – such a confession is not to be taken lightly. Besides, I now decide chat I want to believe him, in part because I don't really know any more, and in part because, as Don Cherry says, he does seem to be paying a heavy penalty for being a certain kind of player who abided, perhaps unwisely, by a certain set of rules.

ON FRIDAY, OCTOBER 6, JUDGE William Kitchen issues a twenty-page ruling in the matter of Marty McSorley. He finds him guilty. In his sentence, Judge Kitchen notes that McSorley "impressed us with his dedication to the game, his diligence, and his bravery. It is clear that he regrets the incident and is remorseful. He has not been able to admit his guilt, but that is understandable." The act, the judge says, "was unpremeditated. It was impulsive, committed when McSorley was caught in a squeeze – attempting to follow an order to fight with Brashear when there was too little time to do so."

"The rules by which he was playing," Judge Kitchen goes on, in an apparent reference to the enforcers' code, are "indefinite, making compliance by the players more difficult."

Still, "Mr.McSorley must be used as an example." Before sentencing him to an eighteenmonth conditional discharge – a slight penalty that involves no jail time or community service – Judge Kitchen asks that McSorley use his influence to effect changes to the game.

A week later, when I talk to McSorley again, he tells me he has an appointment with league officials about getting reinstated. Right now, he is waiting to see how his injured wrist heals. His tired body, more than any lawyers or judges, may finally determine if he ever plays professional hockey again.

Meanwhile, the new NHL season is underway. Players are already complaining about the latest rules designed to make them behave, and are breaking those rules whenever, and however, they can. Donald Brashear has just called McSorley's slash an "accident," and says he wants to forget the incident. In a recent game he punched out Colorado Avalanche tough guy Greg de Vries and dusted off his hands afterwards. As usual, the fans loved it.