Gophers and Huskies scrum

Hum, very interesting, color me surprised, I thought it was UND that was always in the middle of these kind of things, don’t see a hint of green and white anywhere, it looks like Minnesota Pansies’ on ice actually have a player with some grit and moxie in seldom used Jake Parenteau, unlike his fellow teammate sophomore defenseman Seth Helgeson whose modus operandi is to cross check someone that already had an opposition player laying on top of him, or yap at someone while being guarded by the ref, Parenteau takes matter into his own hands, literally.

I was watching the game in question on tape delay early Saturday morning and the game was getting very chippy and rough and MTU Husky Royer took exception with the Parenteau hit which some hockey fans might have taken issue with, I have seen worse hits in this league go uncalled. Well that hit lead to this scrum and also was the end of the night for Bennett Royer and Jake Parenteau who were ejected for fighting, kudos to the refs for letting these two actually settle their differences, instead of giving them a disqualification for fighting when they didn’t actually fight... For some reason unknown, the fight was not part of the FSN video and I can’t find it on line anywhere.

Does Fighting have a place in college hockey?

While some will say that Fighting has no place in college hockey or the NHL for that matter, fighting in hockey does serve a purpose, again, if a team is taking too many liberties with the opposition, fighting can be used as a way to settle differences and or send a message that your team will no longer be pushed around on by the team taking the liberties. Some may look at this as being a vigilante justice but I believe the current rules in college hockey are causing some of the problems we have today.

For instance, if I am a smaller, mouthy hockey player in Division 1 college hockey, I know that I can go up the biggest guy on the ice and slash him or try to choke him in a scrum with my carbon fiber stick, ala what Jacob C-Piss did on Andrew MacWilliam earlier this season and know that I don’t have to fight because the ref is going to rescue him before the bill comes due. If that same player was in a hockey league where fighting is permissible that player would probably never do that guttless act because that player knows that he will probably have to fight if he does. I would be willing to bet the same act that I described above would have not happened in the USHL, CHL, AHL or NHL where fighting is permissible or frowned upon.

In this particular incident the two teams were getting after each other and there probably were a few instances where the players might have crossed that line, after this fight the game settled down the players returned to playing hockey. I also think the mask and the no fighting rule is actually making the college hockey game more dangerous and is the root cause of more gratuitous violence.