As far as an out right ban on fighting in the NHL, I also don’t think the NHL GM’s, coaches and players would probably ever go for it. Here is the way I see it, it you take fighting out of hockey, how in the heck are you going to police the game? You can’t count on the Colin Campbells of the NHL to protect the players on the ice, nor can the referees do so as well. Also, if there is no threat of player ever having to fight on the ice in the NHL you will see more acts of violence from the Matt Cooke type players around the NHL…
TORONTO — If it was Chicago, it might be two bottles of wine. They always seemed to have tough guys in Chicago, scary guys who would keep Jim Thomson awake the night before a game, and the extra wine at dinner helped to fortify him for what lay ahead.
Sometimes the anxiety led to more self-medication, pills that helped him get over the fear of being knocked unconscious in front of 20,000 fans. He was a fighter.
“As a fighter in hockey, you live in fear,” Thomson said.
He lived on the margins of the roster, protecting Wayne Gretzky one year, playing for the Phoenix Roadrunners the next. Thomson logged dozens of fights over a 115-game career, and when it ended, he suffered.
“I went through periods of depression,” he said. “I’m a recovering alcoholic. I believe a lot of my demons, if you will, came from hockey ending and the head blows and certain things that I wasn’t aware of.”
Now 45, Thomson said he “easily” suffered five or six concussions. During one stretch in the American Hockey League, he was punched so hard in a fight on Friday that he cannot remember what he did on the ice during Saturday or Sunday’s games.
On Wednesday, Thomson was among a collection of current and former athletes gathered at the Hockey Hall of Fame to promote a website (stopconcussions.com) designed to help educate athletes on the cause, effects and consequences of concussion. Retired NHL star Keith Primeau was the keynote speaker, but Thomson delivered perhaps the most radical solution to reducing the risk on the ice.
The former fighter would like a blanket ban on fighting in hockey.
“Get it out,” he said. “I mean, come on, why do we need it?”
He referred to it, more than once, as “bare-knuckle fighting.”
