John Branch Wins January Sidney for Investigation into a Hockey Enforcer's Untimely Death

The Sidney Hillman Foundation announced today that John Branch of The New York Times has won the January Sidney Award for his riveting three-part series on the untimely death of Derek Boogaard, a 6-foot-8, 28-year-old hockey enforcer who died of an overdose after a two-year struggle with depression, personality changes, and addiction.

"The series highlights the National Hockey League's hypocrisy about fighting and the human cost behind the spectacle," said Hillman judge Lindsay Beyerstein.

An autopsy of Boogaard's brain revealed advanced chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), an Alzheimer's-like degeneration of the brain caused by repeated head trauma. The disease has been found in boxers and football players as well.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of reporters like Branch, the true cost of head trauma is becoming clear to the average sports fan, despite the best efforts of professional sports leagues to downplay and obfuscate the risk.

"As more and more former athletes are found to have not only had CTE, but to have suffered its effects, the awareness of the issue, from the pro level to the lowest levels of recreational sports, has grown dramatically," Branch said in an interview with Beyerstein.

Read more about the idealization of enforcers in hockey and the NHL's response to the death of Boogard and others in an interview with Branch.

In his prime, Boogaard was one of the most ferocious fighters in the NHL, willing to absorb one punch to land another. Like many players, "The Bogeyman," as Boogaard was called, was prescribed narcotics to dull the pain of a wrecked shoulder, shattered hands and a repeatedly broken nose. The trifecta of orthopedic injuries, painkillers, and head trauma has been called by other writers and reasearchers the "cocktail of death."

Officially, fighting is against the rules of the NHL. In practice, fighting is institutionalized in the NHL through the use of "enforcers"--players with minimal skating and scoring ability whose only role is to fight other enforcers.

Boogaard's friends and family remember him as a gentle giant who fought because fighting was the only path to the NHL. For a kid from small town Saskatchewan, the lure of the big time proved irresistible.

Since its publication, Branch's series has sparked a lively debate about whether fighting in hockey should be banned in publications like Time, PBS and Grantland as well as on numerous sports blogs.

John Branch has been a New York Times sports reporter since 2005. He covered the Giants through their Super Bowl season of 2007, and has since worked mostly as a feature writer in sports, writing about everything from the Olympics to the World Yo-Yo Championships. Before coming to The Times, he was the sports columnist at The Fresno Bee, and previously worked as a sports and business reporter for The Gazette in Colorado Springs. Raised in Colorado, he now lives in New Jersey with his wife and two children.

The Sidney Hillman Foundation honors excellence in journalism in service of the common good. Judges are Rose Arce, Hendrik Hertzberg, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Harold Meyerson, Susan Meiselas, and Lindsay Beyerstein.

The Sidney Award is given once a month to an outstanding piece of socially conscious journalism, by the Sidney Hillman Foundation, which also awards the annual Hillman Prizes every spring. Winners of the Sidney receive a certificate designed by New Yorker cartoonist, Edward Sorel, a $500 honorarium and a bottle of union-made wine.