Thanks to Mike a reader of this blog who sent me this article from ESPN. The other night I was watching a NHL hockey game with my wife when two random goons/tough guys dropped the gloves and broke into a boxing routine. Why wife told me, “This is stupid because these two guys don't even look mad at each other, how can they just fight each other”. I tried to explain the code and the role that fighting has in professional hockey, but I am not sure the random staged fights fall under the code. My also said she likes the fights that happen as a result of a heated emotional play and not some staged bought.
I have to admit that I love watching Derek Boogaard who has played in 187 games scored 2 goals 10 assists and has an eye popping 423 penalty minutes pummel some random thug from the Ducks or the Av’s but I can see Kelly’s point. I also believe it is a slippery slope that the NHL doesn’t want to go down. If you take fighting out of hockey they you run the risk of increasing stick fouls and no way to police the agitators that skate around taking liberties with the games elite players.
TORONTO -- The head of the NHL Players' Association believes it is time to consider a rule mandating helmet use during fights and to examine the role of one-dimensional enforcers in the game.
While a "clear majority" of players want fighting to remain a part of hockey, Paul Kelly feels his constituency is open to restrictions on the process.
"A couple that we've talked about that ought to be looked at anyway is, do you consider a rule whereby players need to keep a helmet on during the course of a fight, and perhaps require officials to step in if a helmet comes off during a fight," Kelly said Wednesday before the Conn Smythe Celebrities Dinner and Auction.
"If it's true that when guys get hurled to the ice or tripped to the ice and bang their skull on the ice is where the real danger comes from, then maybe we can protect against that. It's certainly something worth looking at," the union chief added.
Kelly acknowledged the role fighting has in policing the tenor of play but added that so-called "staged fights" between two players with skill sets limited to throwing punches may no longer have a place in the game. The potential damage that strong men who stand well over 6 feet on skates and weigh more than 250 pounds can inflict might now make such bouts too dangerous.
"If it's a staged fight between two superheavyweights that perhaps arranged it a day before the game, I'm not so sure those are the fights that we need to continue to have in the sport," Kelly said. "And if they're the most dangerous fights, we ought to take a good, hard look at those.
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Instead, Kelly argued that fights arising "out of the spontaneity of the game, the adrenaline of the game, the emotion and the need to protect a teammate or yourself from an unclean hit" were a natural part of hockey and were a required element of the sport.
He went on to say that Wayne Gretzky would have played "several hundred" fewer games in his career if he didn't have Dave Semenko and Marty McSorley as teammates
Don't look for the NHL to ban fighting anytime soon even the commissioner of the NHL isn't for it.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman likened the fighting study to how the league approached the successful revamping of officiating standards coming out of the lockout in terms of its scope.
He warned, however, that banning fighting from the game altogether is a non-starter.
"I don't think there's any appetite to abolish fighting from the game," Bettman said.
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