Eliot: Argument to keep fighting in hockey is now punchless

By Darren Eliot – 

Fighting in hockey: It is a fight the game can no longer rationalize, nor win. Not in today’s climate of player safety, where protecting the head is a priority and sensitivity to the risk of concussion is top of mind in society at large. It is a sentiment Steve Yzerman put forth and was pilloried by many as being hypocritical because he captained a team where fans identified with the Bruise Brothers – Joe Kocur and the late Bob Probert – as much as they did Stevie Y’s grace and skill with the puck.

Yzerman’s point was right on, though. To embrace fighting, or even allow it to exist, is the height of hypocrisy when the focus is on eliminating blows to the head. The two agendas are incompatible. I mean, how do you explain that a well-intended body check gone wrong is a suspendable offense, but a toe-to-toe, bare-knuckle brawl still has a place in the game? The answer is you can’t and the explanation of where fighting fits has been problematic for some time.

I remember tough guy Jeff Odgers telling me how difficult it was for him to explain to his two young sons at the time why he fought when he played hockey. Odgie understood his role, did the best he could in telling the boys that his job was to protect his teammates and serve as sort of a “policeman” on the ice so the other team didn’t do bad things to his team. It is reasonable, given their ages, and for a long time that was plausible in the wider context of fighting as a necessary aspect of hockey.

That no longer applies. The league reviews every indiscretion, with fines and suspensions replacing straight rights to the face as the deterrent. Hit ’em in the bank account instead of the jaw. Big Brother is the goon in today’s NHL. Think about it. For years, proponents of fighting bemoaned the instigator rule that tacks on an extra minor penalty to the aggressor in a fight. Intimidation now had a cost in the form putting your team at a manpower disadvantage. The outcry was that the cheap players who aggravate wouldn’t have to answer for their pestering. They could agitate without having to drop the gloves.

Well, to a certain extent that was true. The proliferation of puck optional players – Matt Cooke, Raffi Torres and Patrick Kaleta come to mind – seemed to support those who thought the answer was to eliminate the instigator rule and let vigilante vengeance once again run its course. Mindfulness via mayhem, hubris curbed by havoc and order restored by chaos, which, of course, is nonsense in today’s current climate and the NHL recognizes that. All three of the players mentioned have received severe suspensions for their reckless hits, with Kaleta’s 10-game suspension being the most recent evidence that the NHL will not tolerate hits to the head, or blows delivered where the sole intent is to, well, “blow somebody up”.

Yet, fighting remains. Tough guy George Parros falls face first, tugged to the ice by fellow pugilist Colton Orr – already down and prone – and they cart him off on a stretcher. In the USHL, a teenage player goes into convulsions after falling on his unprotected head in the aftermath of a fight. The game looks ridiculously haphazard when Brad Stuart’s shoulder rides up into Rick Nash’s chin and carries a three-game suspension, while those two scary incidents, in which games stopped to have players exit the ice with EMS on hand, end with, thankfully, a relieved, “They will be OK”.

Look. I fought, cussed and been concussed. I’ve exhorted teammates in tussles and excoriated marauding opponents. Over the last 18 years as an announcer, I’ve leaped out of my seat in excitement over a good set, too. I value toughness. In short, I’ve always loved a good fight. But, times change. When I began playing hockey as a youngster, nowhere was it written that hockey was a dangerous sport. It was rugged, not risky. You avoided injuries the best you could. You did not fear them. I played with guys who were timid — who played scared. I never met anyone scared to play.

In today’s social climate, however, safety is at the forefront of factors parents consider when putting their children into sports. Hockey Canada is concerned with declining participation numbers in their national sport. Here in Michigan, the number of new players entering the game is off, as well. Yes, there are plenty of other reasons for waning participation. But, the images of players fighting seem barbaric to many young parents when viewed through the prism of today’s Safe Sport, concussion avoidance at all costs, mentality. Ultimately, those numbers will drive the powers that be to align all of the competing agendas and abolish fighting.

In the end, I’m no advocate of banning fighting. In fact, I thought the NHL could have gone the other way a decade ago, embraced its outlaw, roguish ruggedness and stop apologizing for what it wasn’t in its seemingly never ending pursuit of the phantom fringe fan. They didn’t do that, so be it. But here today, you cannot have it both ways. No way.

Regardless of the way it used to be.