  Column: Boogaard a sad example for hockey goons  - Associated
Press - Tuesday, May 14, 2013  The lawsuit doesn't read nearly
as well as the story, which laid bare the life of an NHL
enforcer for all to see. The way John Branch wrote about Derek
Boogaard in the New York Times should have been enough to cause
even the most hardcore hockey fan to reconsider the peculiar
role that goons play in the sport.  It was a sad and troubling
tale of a kid growing up in Canada, raised to do just one thing
_ fight on the ice. A big, hulking man, Boogaard was so good at
it that he not only made it to the NHL but had a contract with
the New York Rangers paying him $1.6 million a year when he died
of an overdose of painkillers two years ago at the age of 28.
Now his family is suing the league, claiming it should have done
more to prevent both Boogaard's brain injuries and his addiction
to pain pills.  "He was there protecting his teammates at all
costs," his mother, Joanne, said in a statement released by her
lawyers, "but