The Curious Case of Dustin Dibble

Well, my pal Susie who I work with at Dumb as a Blog just forwarded this to me, and a lot is being made of it. Apparently, this guy in New York City got drunk watching a hockey game in a bar, fell onto the subway tracks, had his foot severed by the train, and was just awarded a 2.3 million dollar settlement.

Mayor Bloomberg calls it "incomprehensible," the New York Post called it a "rebuke...of justice," and the Daily News said in a headline, that the jury was even stupider than Dibble himself.


I don't know, I feel for this Dustin Dibble kid.

Seriously, if getting drunk in a bar and watching hockey is a crime, lock me up. Plus, none of these news stories mentioned the date of the incident: April 25, 2006. Anybody remember what was going on in April of 2006? That's right, it was the return of the the Stanley Cup playoffs, which had been canceled the previous year due to the lockout. I'm not saying it's not a tragedy, I'm just saying that there were a lot of guys out there who who would have given their left foot to watch some playoff hockey that spring.

I'm not saying I condone public intoxication, But that's something to celebrate, people. There hadn't been any playoff hockey on for almost two years, we'd just gotten through a long cold winter, and they were dropping the puck. Additionally, while the news story didn't specify what game he was watching, it bears mentioning that the Oilers, who eventually came out of the west and were playing great, beat the Detroit Red Wings in double overtime that night.

I might have been out a little late that night myself.

Here's my blog post from that day, in which I warn hockey fans to choose the games they watch wisely.

And perhaps more tellingly, here's my blog post from April 26th, written just after the incident, in which it becomes clear that a hockey fan in New York City had few options when it came to watching games that were not the Devils and Rangers, a terrible series that the Devils swept.

So, while some are busy blaming liberals and lawyers for Mr. Dibble's accident and subsequent payday, I'll come right out and say it: I blame the NHL.

Sure, that subway conductor should have stopped the train, but Gary Bettman and Bob Goodenow shouldn't have stopped the previous year's playoffs, and the NHL should have had a half decent TV package in place, so that the only options to watch the double overtime in the first Stanley Cup playoff in two years wasn't a goddamn bar.

I say that if the City has to pay this kid 2.3 million, some of it oughta come from the NHL.