Editing Andy Bathgate (section)

===Stance against spearing===
In December 1959, Bathgate produced a controversial article for ''[[True (magazine)|True]]'' magazine in which he warned that hockey's "unchecked brutality is going to kill somebody".<ref name="ottawa">{{cite news|title=Hockey's "Unchecked Brutality" Will Kill Claims Andy Bathgate|work=[[Ottawa Citizen]]|location=[[Ottawa]]|date=December 10, 1959|page=17}}</ref> The article, titled "Atrocities on Ice", was [[Ghostwriter|ghostwritten]] by [[Dave Anderson (sportswriter)|Dave Anderson]], who was then a sports journalist with the now defunct ''[[New York Journal-American]]'', and it appeared in ''True'' magazine's January 1960 edition. Bathgate focused mostly on the tactic of [[Penalty (ice hockey)#List of infractions|spearing]], where a player stabs at an opponent with the blade or point of his stick. In a section titled "Andy Bathgate's rogues gallery", six players were highlighted as the most brutal, with their photographs captioned with a short description by Bathgate. These were Detroit's [[Gordie Howe]] ("meanest player in the league; uses all the tricks—plus"); Chicago's [[Ted Lindsay]] ("seldom drops his stick in a fight"); Montreal's [[Tom Johnson (ice hockey)|Tom Johnson]] ("one of the five notorious spearing specialists in the NHL"); Montreal's [[Doug Harvey (ice hockey)|Doug Harvey]] ("lucky he doesn't have a spearing death on his conscience"); Boston's [[Fern Flaman]] ("he's had too many accidents to believe") and New York's [[Lou Fontinato]] ("likes to use the stick but uses his fists in a real fight").<ref name=ottawa/><ref>{{cite news|title=Dan Parker Says|work=[[Montreal Gazette|The Gazette]]|location=Montreal|date=December 18, 1959|page=27}}</ref>

Responding to the article, [[Toe Blake]], the Montreal Canadiens' head coach, admitted that Montreal players used spearing, but claimed it was purely a defensive tactic "necessary to defend against an illegal play pattern used often by the Rangers." Blake said: "They like to skate into our zone against the defence and drop the puck for a teammate following right behind. Then they skate into our defenceman, blocking him out of the play illegally through interference. Our players have sometimes had to spear to fend off the interfering player and keep in play."<ref name=ottawa/><ref name="ottawa2">{{cite news|title=Habs Admit Spearing But Only In Self Defense|work=[[Montreal Gazette|The Gazette]]|location=Montreal|date=December 10, 1959|page=25}}</ref> Doug Harvey also admitted spearing, saying: "Sure, we will spear on occasion. We've got to when they run interference," and that he used it "only for defensive purposes."<ref name=ottawa/><ref name=ottawa2/><ref>{{cite news|title=Spear Carrier|work=[[The Spokesman-Review]]|location=Spokane|date=May 6, 1960|page=19}}</ref>

Bathgate wrote of the offenders: "None of them seems to care that he'll be branded as a hockey killer."<ref>{{cite news|title=Atrocities on Ice and the Good Old Days|first=Jeff Z.|last=Klein|date=March 19, 2009|access-date=March 24, 2015|url=http://slapshot.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/atrocities-on-ice-and-the-good-old-days/|work=[[The New York Times]]|location=New York}}</ref> In response the NHL fined him for "comments definitely prejudicial to the league and the game."<ref>{{cite news|title=Editorial Notes And Comments|work=[[Ottawa Citizen]]|location=[[Ottawa]]|date=December 28, 1959|page=6}}</ref> Speaking in 2010, Bathgate said: "We had an episode where fellas were spearing other players. So I wrote an article with Dave Anderson of ''The New York Times'' [sic] called 'Atrocities on Ice.' Red Sullivan, I saw him speared right in front of our bench and have his spleen punctured. It was getting out of hand. I wrote this article and got fined for it. I got fined $1,000—and I was only making $18,000 at the time—so you take that, plus the $1,000 we had to pay into our pension, that's a lot of money out of your pocket. They changed the rule at the end of the year but they still didn't give me my $1,000 back. It burns my (butt) at times, but you have to stand up for it. Sometimes, you've got to speak up for the betterment of hockey because someone was going to get seriously hurt."<ref>{{cite web|title=Mellon Arena memories: Andy Bathgate|work=Sitting Ringside|url=http://blog.triblive.com/sitting-ringside/2010/04/08/mellon-arena-memories-andy-bathgate/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402115541/http://blog.triblive.com/sitting-ringside/2010/04/08/mellon-arena-memories-andy-bathgate/|url-status=dead|archive-date=April 2, 2015|access-date=March 24, 2015|date=April 8, 2010}}</ref>