The NY Times Profiles the LNAH
Where Pro Hockey Players Fight to Stay in the Game
In a dimly lighted corridor of the dingy, old arena, Donald Brashear, an N.H.L. enforcer for 16 years, said he was playing in the rough and tumble Ligue Nord-Américaine de Hockey because he still loved the game. And though this Quebec league is widely regarded as the world’s toughest, Brashear said he was not in it to fight, but “to play hockey the way I did when I started — making passes, scoring goals.”
Brashear, 39, the captain of 3L de Rivière-du-Loup, was indeed playing it straight: he had 31 points in 27 games and a fairly reasonable 56 penalty minutes going into last Friday’s game here against Caron & Guay de Trois Rivieres. Sometimes, he said, things “get out of hand,” but that he had been in only one fight all season. “The guy just hung on to me for his life,” he said.
