While the recent hit by Erie Otters player Michael Liambas on Ben Fanelli, who suffered a skull fracture and which earned Liambas a season-long ban, has many people saying the game of hockey is in crisis, it's a safe bet that if there had been a video camera around 1910 to record the early days of hockey, the game would never have survived.

Canadians have always had an uneasy relationship with the game, which by its very nature has a high capacity for injuries, either by accident or otherwise.

While other sports may have some of the high risk factors that hockey does, none have the same combination of speed, razor sharp steel, a rock hard playing surface and swinging clubs, all contained inside punishingly unforgiving boards.

As a look at newspaper archives shows and as Lawrence Scalan documented in his book “Grace Under Fire: The State of Our Sweet and Savage Game,” in the early days of hockey, words such as savagery and butchery were often used and the level of violence was such that with several deaths on the ice, two players were charged with murder, although they were acquitted.

From Ace Bailey getting hit from behind, to Rocket Richard hitting Hal Laycoe in the face with his stick, which eventually led to the Richard Riot, during hockey's so-called golden age, stick swinging was routine but the game was generally kept to those who agreed with its code and style of play, while those who disagreed were either generally unaware of the mayhem or content not to see it.

The problems began again for hockey in the 1970s when with hockey games being broadcast live and in red, living colour into every home (and possibly the bench clearing brawls), demands mounted for legislation to clean up the game, causing several players, including all around good-guy Dave “Tiger” Williams to end up in court.

But what may have been the death knell for the game as we know it was the combination of 24 hour media, the Internet and YouTube, making any incident in any arena, no matter how obscure, into an national (or international) scandal in minutes, while giving the country a black eye (pun intended) at the same time.

Instantly, the game was brought to a whole new audience, most of whom didn't want to see what was going on and were disgusted that two normally well-mannered polite Canadians (safe bet) were intent on pummeling each other or worse. Many of those people, including a large percentage of the media, remain both deeply ashamed that Canada's national pastime is a blood sport as well and that even accidental injuries means the game needs to be fundamentally altered or worse.

Whatever happens to the game and whether we change it or not, it's who we are, we've been there before, and the debate will (probably) go on.