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Marty McSorley has a code. Fighting, he’s always said, served a role in the game.

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The goons policed each other. They kept the other goons from going after your skill guys.

That was the claim, anyway.

And when you speak to skill players of the era, they’d insist the goons played a role, that they kept guys from running around too much. They did their thing and the skill guys got to keep going.

Whether it was really true or not, it didn’t matter. They believed it.

The goon did his job and he should have done it with honour, McSorley will tell you.

Sure, sometimes things might have got a little wild, you might have had to do something to remind people you were there. Maybe you got suspended for a few games.

But the release valve was important to the big picture.

You might have been a little crazy from time to time, but at least it was dignified.

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He’s said more than once, though, that Donald Brashear didn’t conform to that sense of dignity. McSorley didn’t like how he’d taunt the bench, how he’d preen.

He also didn’t have time for coaches who would send their tough guys out to menace, but under orders not to fight.

As most fans know, near the end of the Canucks-Bruins game on Feb. 21, 2000, McSorley whacked Brashear on the side of his head. It was such a stunning act, the courts intervened. This is not a hockey act, a judge would rule.

But all these years later, McSorley remains defiant. That much is clear from conversations I’ve had with him and from his very public appearance on Sportsnet 650 on Friday.

“I gave Donald Brashear a whack, for him to turn around and fight me,” McSorley told Jason Brough and Mike Halford. “The stick hit him on the shoulder … I came up from my waist to whack him in the body.”

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His claim on where he hit Brashear has always defied reality: The video is plain as day, showing McSorley hitting Brashear right in the head. He may have been trying to hit Brashear in the shoulder but he missed.

And then the worst happened.

After the game, McSorley admitted, “That’s not what I intended to do.”

But in the years since, his position has shifted to one of blame. He fingers Brashear for not fighting him — although they had fought earlier in the game and Brashear had beaten him up badly, as had been the case over most of their encounters. Brashear was much younger, much stronger. McSorley, by then, was an aging veteran.

McSorley had tried to fight Brashear a second time in the game but ended up with a misconduct.

Then late in the game, the Canucks’ tough guy was back on the ice. This is where McSorley blames Canucks coach Marc Crawford. “What was he doing putting Brashear on the ice,” McSorley has asked.

Bruins coach Pat Burns threw McSorley out in response, telling his tough guy to go fight.

Brashear, as far as McSorley is concerned, was sent out by Crawford to taunt, but not to fight. There’s not much that McSorley hates more than a coach who does that.

The worst thing happened and the years have soured McSorley on it all. Why he won’t simply say, “I’m sorry I hit Brashear in the head like that, despite all these other things,” isn’t clear. It doesn’t seem that hard.

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For a guy who is so adamant about a code, it’s very odd he still refuses after all these years to just admit what we all can see.

Fixing the scoreboard

A game after Rick Tocchet noted how fans pay hundreds of dollars to sit in Rogers Arena’s seats and that his players should give the fans more to cheer about, it was the building itself that let the fans down.

Some sort of malfunction meant that the video boards that ring the stands all went dark. And apparently the same system controls the lower band of the main scoreboard, since it went dark, too.

Would be nice if fans were given some sort of credit since they missed out on the full experience.

Time to go on a fun run

“We need to build,” Tyler Myers said after the game.

Here’s a guy who has seen it all in Vancouver. He signed here five years ago hoping to step into a glorious new era for the hometown team.

It was a bumpier ride than he expected. But the way things have turned under Rick Tocchet, this is the team he always hoped he’d join.

Last year, they finally did walk the walk. They can be that team again, he truly believes.

His head coach says they need to play harder. Myers generally defaults to the team’s focus level.

I just wonder if they need to find a way to have a little more fun. Are they smiling enough? I’m not so sure.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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