The Future of Fighting in the NHL
General Managers to Debate Hockey Fights
Jan 25, 2009 Michael Spagnuolo
The death of Ontario Senior League player Don Sanderson has renewed debate on the role of fighting in hockey. And while both opponents and proponents of fighting will go tooth and nail to keep or eliminate it, the reality appears to be that fighting in the NHL and in all professional hockey leagues is here to stay.
Ban Fighting?
Those who want to permanently eliminate fighting in the game will cite the fact that in no other professional sport is fighting acceptable. And they will add that the existence of fighting in hockey is what is holding the game back from projecting a positive image to sports fans. But with the exception of football, there is no other sport that has the level of constant physical contact that hockey has, and even the NFL can not totally prevent fights, however few of them, from occurring on the field.
The league has made inroads in attempting to minimize pugilism on the ice. Gone are the bench-clearing brawls of the 70's and 80's; players that leave the bench to fight nowadays earn automatic suspensions for themselves and their coaches. And however flawed it is, the instigator penalty assessed to those who initiate fights is, in theory, a somewhat effective deterrent from one-trick pony goons slugging it out on every shift.
Often lost in this debate is that there is honour among fighters. For the most part, there is a code that pugilists share. They do not fight willy-nilly, but mutually, at certain times, under specific circumstances. They often serve as on-ice bodyguards for offensive superstars. Many of them, contrary to popular belief, are often very skilled hockey players themselves, and not just with their fists. Legendary players like Cam Neely, Gordie Howe and Stan Mikita all had the ability to throw down with the best of them, but never did it detract from the quality of their overall play.
NHL May Punish Players Who Fight Without Helmets
One option the league is considering to further limit, but not completely ban, fighting is to not only punish those who fight, but those who remove their helmets to fight, with perhaps a game misconduct or suspension. While it is not an outright ban, the psychology behind it might be if one were to throw a punch into a fiberglass helmet, he would sustain a hand injury. So, that in of itself would discourage fighting, and the more serious penalty that would incur if one was to actually remove his helmet to fight would further discourage it.
However, this attempt at a King Solomon-like agreement makes no one happy: there is no outright ban on fighting to satisfy hockey's pacifists, and for those who advocate, or at best, tolerate fighting, it is so discouraged that for all intents-and-purposes it would be eliminated.
Fighting Is Probably Here To Stay
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman may not like to admit this, but fighting will always exist in hockey, in part because it excites fans. Go to any game, and people will leave their seats during fights just as much as they would in an overtime shootout. And many current executives, who will be meeting this week to discuss the issue at the G.M.'s meeting in Florida are former players who earned their stripes in a much tougher era of hockey where fighting was more socially acceptable that now.
The Sanderson tragedy, while very unfortunate and sad, is an isolated incident. He was not an NHL player, so those in charge of caretaking the game have no real responsibility to further reduce or eliminate fighting. Fighting has, and will always have, like it or not, a place in the game of hockey.
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