A TV Murder On The Ice

I was doing some work this morning and I needed some "white noise" in the background to keep my mind from drifting. Normally, I throw some sort of streaming television on to keep my mind in the game, and I happened to land on Pluto TV's CSI channel as my chosen stream. I've seen a lot of the CSI episodes as I was a devout viewer during the heady days of Grissom, Willows, Stokes, Brown, and Sidle, but there was an episode that came on today that I had forgotten about that dealt directly with hockey. With hockey being as big as it is in Vegas at this point, I figured that I could combine the passion that Vegas had for the game and my devotion to old CSI episodes by doing something unique for this particular episode of one of TV's most popular crime shows!

As you likely know if you've seen CSI, there are usually two cases solved per episode as the teams splits into smaller teams to tackle all the crimes being committed. In Episode 16 of Season 2, entitled "Primum Non Nocere", the hockey case is the main case in the episode and is investigated by Grissom, Sidle, and Willows. The second case is one of about a musician dying of an overdose that is investigated by Stokes and Brown. In other words, it's a standard CSI episode that follows the normal show construction.

The musician's case isn't our focus when it comes to hockey, though. The episode, which aired on February 28, 2002, features all of William Petersen, Marg Helgenberger, Jorja Fox, Paul Guilfoyle, Eric Szmanda, Robert David Hall, Jeremy Ratchford, Abby Brammell, Peter Mackenzie, and David Andriole in the hockey story, and the crime scene investigators need to figure out who killed Terry Rivers, played by Andriole, following a pile-up in front of the net.

Grissom and Willows are first on the scene, and they speak with Brass who fills them in on Rivers being moved to the bench where he died. They examine the body and note the injuries suffered by Rivers before the episode goes to introduction. You know this one, I'm sure.
The classic song of "Who Are You" by The Who was sold by Pete Townsend likely made the band popular with a younger audience with its weekly airings, and the other CSI franchises followed suit in keeping with The Who's library of songs as their introduction themes.

After the introduction, Grissom is reading hockey stats before he and Sidle begin their initial examination of the ice surface where the game was played. After coming up with little evidence, Sidle notes that they should look off the ice as the ice resurfacer rolls onto the ice. The scene shifts to Willows interviewing Dr. Ron Stockwell who said that he moved River's body to the bench in order to perform CPR. Tommy Sconzo, played by Ratchford, chats with Willows next, and he makes a comment of "a real McCracken" in reference to the player who knocked out his tooth that which resulted in the pile-up where Rivers ended up dead.

As an aside, that reference, to me, is a fantastic Slap Shot note with respect to Tim "Dr. Hook" McCracken, but I digress. I'm not here to break down the entire episode - you can find that here - but I am here to breakdown the hockey aspects of the episode which were just necessary to setup the eventual cause of murder. What should be noted is that the hockey part of the story was an entry into another solid investigation that had some good science in it. Full marks to Grissom for scooping up the vomit regurgitated by Jane Gallagher, played by Abby Brammell, and noting the food poisoning fact.

The episode was written Danny Cannon, an Emmy-nominated film and television producer, director and writer, who has directed feature films such as Judge Dredd with Sylvester Stallone while executive producing and directing episodes of CSI, CSI: Miami, and CSI: New York. Andrew Lipsitz directed the episode, and he was also an executive producer on both CSI and CSI: New York as well as Castle. That's not to say that these men had the accomplishments they do now when they were involved in this episode's creation, but it's a well-told weaving of two stories that has a murder in the hockey rink that I don't think anyone may have suspected had it not been for the sleuths at the CSI laboratory in Las Vegas.

It won't be an episode that stands out for the hockey portion, but CSI was talking about hockey in Vegas in 2002 - long before the Golden Knights got there and one year before the WCHL's Las Vegas Wranglers landed in town. Yes, th IHL's Las Vegas Thunder had been there prior to the CSI episode, but no one was really talking about Las Vegas as a hockey town when the episode aired in 2002. It's funny how quickly things can change, though, as the NHL's Stanley Cup champions now call the city home.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!