Another death. Another possible link to fisticuffs in hockey. Another wave of speculation. Another round of questions.

And not nearly enough answers.

We know Derek Boogaard died in May due to a killer combination of booze and pain killers. We know Rick Rypien died last month after waging a courageous, albeit losing battle with depression. We know Wade Belak is dead and, like Rypien, apparently by his own hand.

We just don't know why.

There is, of course, a common denominator in that all three of the deceased National Hockey League performers were practitioners of the most barbaric, Neanderthalic element of the sport: bare-knuckle brawling. Yet, to flatly state that their back-alley behavior is at the very root of their deaths is like saying the Canucks were responsible for post-Stanley Cup rioting in Vancouver.

Was Boogaard, 28, on booze and pain pills because he had to fight?

Who or what were the demons that caused the 27-year-old Rypien's depression, and were they seeded in on-ice fisticuffs?

Belak, by all accounts, was a big, fun-loving, gregarious guy and, unlike Boogaard and Rypien, his playing days were over. The dread of suiting up for another season of goon dancing had come to an end for the 35-year-old rearguard, and he was in the process of making a seamless transition from a 15-year NHL career to a media gig. So what role, if any, did fighting play in sending him to the dark side?

Are these deaths a horrible, tragic coincidence in that all three were hockey enforcers, or is there merit to speculation and suggestion that the two are undeniably linked and that fighting in the NHL is the smoking gun investigators will find as they probe for answers?

I have two better questions: Are hockey players dying or are they being killed? In other words, is the NHL killing its own players?

I wasn't prepared to pose those what-ifs after the losses of Boogaard and Rypien. I refused to make their deaths part of the fighting-in-hockey debate. But three in a four-month period is simply too much to ignore. 

If evidence proves conclusively that fighting led to these three deaths, then the NHL, by its endorsement of back-alley tactics and by clinging to a macho manifesto that dates back to the caveman era, is guilty. Its fingers will be all over that smoking gun—not even O.J.'s lawyers could get an acquittal.

Personally, I believe fighting in hockey should have been banned long before NHL players became taller than telephone poles, heavier than a team of draught horses and coated in more armour than a Brinks truck. The games should be determined by skill, not by no-talent ruffians.

But fighting is here to stay as long as the NHL's stone-age thinkers endorse blood lust and as long as there remains a blood-lusting audience.

Just remember this the next time you stand up and cheer when two Goliaths trade bare-knuckles in an NHL arena near you: Those two players aren't just fighting; they just might be killing each other.