“One player on a stretcher shouldn’t trigger a debate on fighting in the NHL”. This is the bi-line from an article on TSN about fighting in pro hockey. I don’t regularly read sports news but this made the front page of Google News and I thought “that must be a typo”. It isn’t.
The article came about because the other day Todd Fedoruk of the Flyers had to be wheeled off the ice on a stretcher because he got knocked out in a fight. The article quotes several NHL GMs, players, and goons saying that fighting is an intricate part of the sport. The article then seems to make light of the situation with a quote from Fedoruk: “Obviously I was knocked out, but the day after I was fine. I’ve got minor concussion symptoms”. I wonder how reputable of a journalist you can be if you completely forget to mention the long term and lasting effects of having multiple concussions. Luckily, the article does make a point of mentioning how college, European, and Olympic hockey have no fighting and also includes a quote from an International Hockey Federation official who basically calls NHL owners Neanderthals.
So if this is the reaction to someone get knocked out then I’m guessing that someone would actually have to die (or nearly die) for the NHL to do something. And this isn’t a far fetched idea. All you have to do is look at the NBA and the single punch Kermit Washington threw at Rudy Tomjanovich in 1978…
Washington was currently engaged in a brawl when he saw Tomjanovich running to help, so Washington swung around to meet him. The punch, which took Tomjanovich by surprise, fractured his face away from his skull about 1/4 of an inch and left Tomjanovich unconscious in a pool of blood in the middle of the arena. Players involved often say that right after Tomjanovich collapsed, the silence at the arena, filled with shocked fans, was “the loudest silence ever heard”. Upon later inspection by the doctors at the scene, it was discovered that Rudy was actually leaking spinal fluid into his mouth, and that not only his basketball career, but his life, was in danger at that point.
- from Wikipedia, emphasis mine
The incident is actually retold in a book by John Feinstein called The Punch. The book recounts a very similar environment. A league which carried “enforcers” on their team, where fighting was “part of the game”, and the NBA had 41 fights in it’s previous season. Unfortunately, someone almost had to die before NBA owners made it clear that “You couldn’t allow men that big and that strong to go around throwing punches at each other”.
My point? I don’t think saying “Neanderthal” was very far off.
As a hockey player, I actually agree with this. I play contact hockey, in fact I played today, and I know that contact adds an extra element to the game. It makes the game more competitive and keeps not only the score, but the players in check. However, I feel that the NHL uses fighting purely for the entertainment and not as part of the game. It has become too showy, too American.
Of the games I went to see in the US, it seems that Americans demand fights. Whereas, back home, Canadians tolerate the fights. The real question is, can the NHL be profitable without fights?
the problem with your argument, tyler, is that you aren’t a hockey player or even a hockey fan (from what i know of you). i subscribe to the NHL centre ice TV package and have watched about 60 of the edmonton oilers’ 75 games thus far this season. i don’t put too much value on the renewed debate around fighting, because frankly, within hockey circles, there isn’t much debate at all.
in all recent polls of NHL players, coaches, management, AND fans, upwards of 90% of all respondents were in support of keeping fighting in the game.
there have been fights in hockey from pretty much the very first game in the 1800s. fights are almost always between willing participants. it’s the violent, non-fighting incidents that need to be legislated out of the game, like head shots, stick work, and deliberate knee-on-knee hits. a journalist on hockey night in canada commented last night on how the world hockey championships, where fighting is not allowed, have some of the worst stick work of any competition in the world.
in my opinion, the only reasonable solution that has come out of this discussion came from todd fedoruk himself, who suggested that perhaps NHL enforcers should wear 3-oz. gloves like the ones worn by mixed martial arts fighters, although i don’t see how this could implemented in any practical way.