Hockey 2010-2011

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I forgot to mention earlier...congratulations on your 10000th post, smc!

[smc]

Kevin Paul Dupont, the Hall of Fame hockey writer for The Boston Globe, makes a compelling case against fighting in last Sunday's column. Thoughts?

Hockey Notes

It hurts to say, but it?s time to give up the fight

By Kevin Paul Dupont
June 5, 2011

I am done with fighting in hockey. Time to get it gone.

It took a very long journey for me to get here, roughly a half-century, including my years as a fan prior to covering the NHL night-and-day in the late 1970s. I also realize there is no going back now after skating across the pacifist?s green line.

Granted, there is no green line in the NHL, but I offer it up here as a visual in the general context of 21st century green/sustainability.

There was no epiphany for me during the Stanley Cup Final, the Bruins? first trip to the championship round in 21 years. No ah-hah! or gotcha! moment in the middle of the Hub?s hockey renaissance.

If someone wants to say now that I?ve finally grown up, then fine, but I can prove otherwise with any number of adolescent habits that I still hold dear, including such things as ?Three Stooges,?? ?Looney Tunes,?? and ?Honeymooners?? reruns, not to mention a fixation with Friendly?s Awful-Awfuls and Fudge Flat Tops that should have ended in the ?60s.

Most of all, I?ve evolved to this point because of the game?s culture, one that I?ve been saying and writing these last 18-24 months must change, principally because players today get injured too often, some of their brains damaged beyond repair, and fighting plays a part in that. That?s not to say all of that, but a part of that, and I now believe that taking out the fights ? as much as I will miss them ? is simply the easiest, most obvious first step to change the game?s runaway seek-and-destroy culture.

Too much of today?s game is about hitting to hurt, literally to break the opponent, and that?s not just a danger to players but also to the game?s image, its marketability, and I think its sustainability. To abolish fighting won?t be a cure-all, but I believe it can be key in unraveling a complicated, dangerous, and ultimately losing environment.

So I made that very case the other day to Bruins career tough guy Shawn Thornton, whom I respect as a person, a player, and a fighter (my kind of hat trick). He looked at me in dismay, and then in all sincerity, and with a good amount of animation and invective, told me I was nuts. He made his points in support of the sweet science (all in line with my lifetime position) and really couldn?t be swayed with my ?culture change?? postulate.

?I think if you take fighting out,?? said Thornton, ?you?ll see the game go to places where you?ll want it back just to stop the nonsense ? more stick work, more cheap shots, just all the junk. Maybe that?s my old-school thinking, but ..."

Should anyone be surprised by that? Thornton is a sincere, passionate, honest guy, and he freely admits that he wouldn?t be making a decent paycheck today if he hadn?t spent roughly a decade beating up people in junior and minor pro hockey.

He is more than a pugilist at age 33 ? in fact, quite a bit more than a lot of people think ? but he is unwilling to surrender his stance on fighting. Not even when faced with the hard truth, as shown by the continuing Boston University study on concussions in sports, that career hockey tough guy Bob Probert suffered brain damage, likely from trading too many blows to the head in his many epic punch-ups.

The landmark BU study, centered on dissected brains harvested from deceased athletes, will have a profound impact on contact sports and their inherent risks to athletes? brains. The study is in its infancy, but I am already convinced that it is going to be a game-changer in many sports, especially hockey and football, perhaps lacrosse.

I don?t know if that?s going to take a couple of years, a decade or longer, but as the study expands, evidence mounts, and knowledge grows, parents and the public at large will grasp just how dangerous it is for kids and adults to keep getting smacked upside the head. If I am correct, the public eventually will perceive that head contact is to sports what cigarette smoking is to general health.

?I?ll agree with you, our sport needs a culture change,?? said Thornton. ?It needs to happen and it will be difficult.

?I think a large part of that is the equipment ? the big, killer shoulder pads and elbow pads. I think if everyone wore the smaller pads, like me and Rex [Mark Recchi] wear, you?d see fewer concussions and a lot fewer injuries all around.??

All of that is good and necessary, I said to Thornton, but that won?t stop brain injuries that are the direct result of fighting. The NHL continues to peck its way through its concussion data and likely won?t make the numbers public. Recent published reports, noting the league?s extensive study, suggested that some 8 percent of the NHL?s concussions the last few years were a direct result of fighting.

?OK,?? said Thornton, ?if that?s true, then that tells me that 92 percent came from other causes, right? I say let?s work at fixing the 92 percent.

?Guys are going to get concussions, and if a guy?s got his head down, and gets popped on the chin, nothing?s going to prevent that. I really think a lot of this is that some of the equipment has to be downsized, softened maybe, and the culture will change around that."

And what of Probert? There is no guarantee that his brain degenerated because of fighting, but many are willing to accept the prima facie evidence that Probert?s lifetime penalty card (3,300 minutes) included too many concussions meted out by opponents? fists delivered to his skull.

Probert, 45, died less than a year ago, succumbing to a heart attack while boating with his family in Ontario. BU?s Sports Legacy Institute announced in February that it found Probert?s brain was damaged by chronic, degenerative disease.

?I can?t think about that, the danger, and go out there and do what I do,?? mused Thornton. ?I can?t think about all the fights I?ve had, either. I just can?t go there.

?I?ve worked hard, really hard, to get here. I had to fight to get here. If I hadn?t done all that in the American League, at a time when that?s really all I did, then I?m probably still back home, working in the steel factory.??

I?ve supported hockey fights forever, in every print and electronic platform at my disposal, and have returned countless e-mails to readers, some of them incensed educators (pre-K through college), telling them what I still believe to be true: that players enter the game, and play it, and in some cases fight within it, by their own free will. I?ve also said that fighting sells, that many fans like the fighting more than the hockey, and that, for better or worse, for decades it has helped define a sport in the United States, which, even today, essentially remains largely a non-traditional hockey market.

For a lot of people in the Lower 48, the idea lingers that paying to attend a hockey game is buying a ticket to a fight. Many of my Canadian-born pals, some in this beautiful city, think that?s funny, even ridiculous. But they come from a place where virtually every child, boy and girl, has a hockey stick placed in one hand at the same time the other is otherwise occupied by a binky. Canadians don?t just get hockey, they are hockey. They are born into it.

Now, I would say most Canadians don?t consider themselves hockey purists or elitists, or too refined or possessive about their sport to think fighting is a problem. Based on 30-plus years of conversations with friends in Canada, I can tell you many of them very much like the fights.

You might be familiar with former Boston coach/Canadian icon Don Cherry?s love of a good, honest dustup? On the whole, Canadians can probably take it or leave it, and there are probably slightly more in the ?Grapes?? category.

But hockey just has too much hurt in it now, too many broken bodies, fueled by a mentality among the players that big hits and big fights make them big players, fueled by marketing departments that show endless in-arena videos of crunching body slams and brutal bouts. To its credit, the league has done away with the bloody donnybrooks of old (I?ll confess to liking those, too).

Fighting really is, for all the talk it garners, a very tiny piece of the NHL puzzle these days. It has become a piece easy to remove, and getting rid of it is essential, I?m convinced, in dialing back the overall emphasis on seek-and-destroy and placing more on skate-pass-and-shoot.

It?s not all that bad in and of itself, but I think it serves as a crusty, barnacled anchor for violence, for danger, for broken bodies and ravaged, irreparable brains. Just time to go away.

Hockey is a great sport, and it can thrive beyond the green line. I?ve crossed, and hope you?ll come, too.

[transjen]

It's a damned if you do and damned if you don't
Hockey fights are very popular don't believe me? just check youtube
The fighting in hockey put people in the seats and what team owner hates when that happens
You have to walk a tight rope to cut down on the amount of fights but you still have to allow some for the non true hockey fans
Hockey fights sadly are about the only thing that makes it on ESPN's highlights programs
Penguinsfan Jen

[smc]

Originally Posted by transjen

It's a damned if you do and damned if you don't
Hockey fights are very popular don't believe me? just check youtube
The fighting in hockey put people in the seats and what team owner hates when that happens
You have to walk a tight rope to cut down on the amount of fights but you still have to allow some for the non true hockey fans
Hockey fights sadly are about the only thing that makes it on ESPN's highlights programs
Penguinsfan Jen

I think Dupont's point is that you can have the physicality at a level that is still attractive to fans without the fighting that is so dangerous. Who knows? I am glad that whereas the "fan base" for NASCAR is primarily waiting for a crash (after all, what is there to see in cars going around and around, endlessly, on an oval track), at least real hockey fans also like hockey, not just fighting.

[smc]

Meanwhile, how about this for a tradeoff.

The Canucks lose a third-tier defenseman.
The Bruins lose their number-two scorer in the playoffs, who was responsible for two winning goals in overtime and two winning Game 7 goals.

I'd say the Canucks made a damn good trade.

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Originally Posted by smc

Meanwhile, how about this for a tradeoff.

The Canucks lose a third-tier defenseman.
The Bruins lose their number-two scorer in the playoffs, who was responsible for two winning goals in overtime and two winning Game 7 goals.

I'd say the Canucks made a damn good trade.

I just hope that Horton can begin playing for the pre-season next year. Concussions can be a career-ender, and I don't want to see anyone's career ended because of one.

With regards to the article posted above, I like fighting in hockey for the most part. If someone takes liberties with one of your players, you can give them a reason to stop doing it. I don't like the "scripted" fights, the ones where it is obvious that they are going to fight before there is even a reason to fight(5 seconds into the freaking game for instance!). I love watching hockey, and not just for the fighting.
I love games like the ones that Boston and Vancouver played in the first two games(minus the stupid penalties, both bogus and deserved) rather than the blowout game 3(even if it had been Vancouver winning 8-1). There is no suspense in blowout games, and the one-goal games are heart-pounding through and through.

[transjen]

Did hell just freeze over?
I ask this because the Flyers just got the rights for Ilya Bryzgalov
Can it be that the Flyers are serious about getting a decent goalie?
Penguinsfan Jen