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GRAHAM BRINKFrom disregard for the Sabbath to deadly blows, the tone of hockey is set early.
From hockey's infancy, the players have had a loose relationship with the official rules, using them more as guidelines than edicts set in stone.
The outlaw skater blessed in the combative arts has long held a venerable place in the game.
Maybe the seeds were sown in 1829, the year a man was convicted of "engaging in recreational amusement" on the Sabbath for playing an early form of hockey on a pond in Atlantic Canada.
The Nova Scotia Supreme Court later overturned the conviction, prompting one angry reader of the Colonial Patriot in Pictou to write that the ruling cleared the way for further incivilities.
"Every idler who feels disposed to profane the Lord's day, may now, secure from any consequences, turn out with skates on feet, hurly in hand, and play the delectable game of break-shins without any regard to laws," the letter writer chastised.
Perhaps the writer was right. The fledgling game took root and spread through eastern Canada and New England.
One of the early written accounts of an organized hockey game described a bruising contest.
"Falls were frequent, and several unavoidable blows were exchanged," wrote the Montreal Gazette in 1877.
In 1907, the game turned deadly in a particularly nasty showdown between Cornwall and the Ottawa Victorias.
Witnesses differed about what happened. Some reports had the Victorias' Charles Masson clubbing Cornwall's best player, Owen McCourt, in the head with his stick after McCourt hit one of the Victorias.
McCourt went down with a gash to the head. He later died at the local hospital.
"I did not sleep much Wednesday night," the referee told the Ottawa Journal. "The picture of poor McCourt being sewed up on the slab in the dressing room was with me during the three early hours of the morning."
Authorities charged Masson with murder, which was eventually reduced to manslaughter. At trial, the jury acquitted him, saying it was not clear he delivered the fatal blow.
"I'm very sorry," McCourt said of the incident.
One of hockey's most infamous moments came in 1933, in a violent collision dubbed the Hit Heard from Coast to Coast.
The Maple Leafs' Ace Bailey was one of Toronto's all-time favorite players. The Boston Bruins' Eddie Shore, known as Old Blood and Guts, was famous for his body checks and surly manner. Both were future Hall of Famers.
During a regular-season game, a Toronto player hit Shore as he skated up ice. Angry and dazed, Shore went looking for revenge. He skated at Bailey, sending him hard into the ice with a hit from behind. Bailey was out cold and bleeding from the head. Shore reportedly smiled, which prompted one of Bailey's teammates to punch him in the face.
Bailey, who would never play again, had a fractured skull and nearly died that night in the hospital. The story goes that his father went looking for Shore with a shotgun in hand. Local police intercepted him and sent him home.
As he clung to life after the game, Bailey woke up long enough to accept Shore's apology.
"That's all right, Eddie," he said. "It's all part of the game."