Michael Farber The NHL had little choice in the matter, but it still deserves credit for making the right decision on Todd Bertuzzi. • Click here for full story. NHL's Longest Suspensions Year Player, Team Length 2000 Marty McSorley, BOS 1 year Stick to the head of Donald Brashear 2000 Gordie Dwyer, TB 23 games Ref abuse; leaving penalty box to fight 1993 Dale Hunter, WAS 21 games Blindside check of Pierre Turgeon 2000 Brad May, PHO 20 games Slash to Steve Heinze's nose 1983 Tom Lysiak, CHI 20 games Intentionally tripping a linesman Click here for complete list.

Here is the story of me and hockey, as my entrée into the Todd Bertuzzi debate. It's a mercifully short story: I grew up a basketball player and played (sparingly, at the end) through the college Division III level and many years beyond in recreational leagues of varying quality. While in college, I roomed with hockey players and spent long nights arguing the merits of my game versus theirs. Typical exchange:

Me: "What kind of game is it when you only have to play 45 seconds at a time and then rest for two minutes?"

Them: "Basketball is for people who can't skate."

Truth be told, it never got a lot deeper than that. Fast forward: I'm grown up, with a daughter and son. I introduce my son to basketball in the driveway and in the local kids league. At the same time, he learns to skate (we live in New England) and then, just to keep him busy, we enroll him in a weekend Introduction to Hockey program. Once he gets a stick and a helmet -- even at age 5 -- he's hooked. Basketball is cooked. I am again stuck rooming with a hockey player. (This has led to many odd moments, none more bittersweet for me than when we were watching SportsCenter a few years back when somebody drained a halfcourt buzzer-beater. "Dad!" yelled my son. "He made it from the red line.")

My son turns out to be halfway decent at hockey and makes some travel teams. This winter, he and his teammates won a state championship and will travel four hours to play in a regional championship tournament (don't even get me started on youth sports overkill). None of them are headed for the NHL. Probably none of them are headed for college hockey. Just a bunch of little kids having a good season. But the point is this: Over the past five years of watching youth hockey, high school hockey, college hockey and professional hockey, I've become converted. (More disclosure: Early in my sports journalism, I covered a fair amount of hockey; I realize now I was clueless).

I appreciate the skill involved in hockey and the odd combination of power and finesse required to form a successful team. I respect the physical drain of the hard, 45-second shift. I enjoy watching the curious geometry of games and interwoven ballet of players and puck. When I watch games on television, I have no trouble following the puck. And yes, I think the physical nature of the sport is vital to its energy. Not in the same way as football, where the whistle does not generally blow until somebody has been taken to the ground, but as an interruptive force, mixing power with grace.

On Monday night, in a highlight (lowlight?) clip that has been replayed more than any hockey moment this year, Bertuzzi of the Vancouver Canucks viciously took down Steve Moore of the Colorado Avalanche with a blow to the head and then crushed Moore with the full weight of his 245-pound frame. Moore suffered a concussion, broken neck and numerous lacerations to his face and head. He remains hospitalized. It does not take hockey expertise to ingest Bertuzzi's hit on a visceral level. It was cheap and ugly and obviously dangerous.

The buzzword inside hockey has been that Bertuzzi's hit was "retaliation" for Moore's open-ice check on Vancouver star Markus Naslund a month ago, a hit that left Naslund with a concussion and caused him to miss three games. That's probably an accurate take, but it's insignificant at this point.

Hockey is mindlessly teetering on the edge of extinction. I take that back. Not extinction, but -- and this is almost as bad -- marginalization. Television ratings remain abysmal. Last month, the NHL All-Star Game got trounced in the ratings by Arena Football. The NHL is on the verge of a work stoppage that could wipe out an entire season. Soon the NHL will live where track and field and skiing and swimming live, in a cable ghetto where only the truly devoted will venture in search of entertainment. The Big Four (football, basketball, baseball and hockey) will become a Big Three.

The sport deserves better. It is a riveting, nonstop game played at high speed by surpassingly talented athletes. But when reduced to its violent lowest form, it is deplorable and becomes not only fodder for mass criticism but the worst derivative of itself. In this form, the game deserves being shoved to the side of the sports superhighway.

And this would be a shame. It is odd to watch the youngsters play now, wondering if they might be the last generation of youth hockey players participating in a game that also has a major league version. Not because many of them ever will reach that level, but because it lends an air of credibility to the activity. A kid can go out and imitate Martin St. Louis in practice. I fear that instead he might go out and imitate Todd Bertuzzi.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Tim Layden weighs in with a Viewpoint every week on SI.com