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hockeygodBoth sides resort to myths in the debate over fighting
By PAT HICKEY, The Gazette February 15, 2011
Fighting in the National Hockey League has been in the news in the past two weeks and it's time to look at a couple of myths and misconceptions.
Myth No. 1 is that the NHL is only major professional sport that allows fighting.
In fact, the NHL rule book devotes 51/2 pages to the definition of fighting, the circumstances surrounding fights and the sanctions that result from a fight.
But, while the NHL rules say that fighting is unacceptable, the reality is that the league tolerates fighting. Players who are involved in fights seldom face any consequences.
When a player takes a penalty for hooking, interference or for something as benign as jumping on the ice too soon giving his team too many men, he may incur the wrath of his coach for leaving his team short-handed.
That doesn't happen with fighting. While there is a provision for extra penalties for a player who instigates a fight, this infraction is seldom invoked. When a fighter goes to the penalty box, he usually takes an opponent with him. In these cases, a coach may actually praise the player for giving his team a lift or sticking up for a teammate.
A straw poll of the Canadiens' players yesterday provided a consensus that fighting is part of the game and will never be eliminated.
Captain Brian Gionta fell back on Myth No. 2, which stipulates that fighting serves as a safety valve for pent-up emotions. He played college hockey at Boston College and noted that the NCAA hands out suspensions for fighting and that the result is that there are more stick fouls.
But the pent-up emotion argument doesn't hold to an examination of the facts. Our good friends at hockeyfights.comoffer some interesting statistics about fighting and they show the great disparity between fighting in the regular season and in the playoffs. You would think that emotions would run highest with the Stanley Cup on the line. You would think that the animosity between teams would increase when they face each other up to seven times over a two-week period.
The reality is that fighting practically disappears during the postseason. Over the past five seasons, there has been at least one fight in 40 per cent of the games in the regular season. That number drops to about 10 per cent in the postseason. In the 2008 playoffs, there were 85 games and only six of them (7.1 per cent) included a fight
Why the drop? It's because coaches and players concentrate on winning hockey games and, with the rare exception, fighting doesn't win hockey games.
One reason the NHL tolerates fights is that some fans like them and that may be necessary to sell the game in a season that is too long and features a product that is too watered down.
When Penguins owner Mario Lemieux went off during the weekend, decrying some of the recent goonery around the league, fans weighed in on chat sites and radio talk shows. They denounced him as a whiner and pointed out that he's hypocritical because his team leads the NHL in fighting majors and employs Matt Cooke, who has a reputation for delivering dangerous hits.
But Lemieux, who expressed his frustration as a player by calling the NHL a garage league, offers some food for thought.
Michael Cammalleri said he had been talking to some friends who said that fighting must be on the rise this season. The reality is that the incidence of fighting has been steady the past five seasons at about .58 fights a game.
But something is wrong when there are three fights in the first four seconds of a game or when two teams rack up more than 360 penalty minutes. Suspensions are up but it's difficult to say whether that's because there's more dirty play or because the NHL is coming down harder on offenders. The anecdotal evidence would suggest there have been more injuries to key players but, again, it's sometimes difficult to separate foul play from misadventure.
The NHL can't afford to lose Sidney Crosby because of a hit from behind, and Matt Cooke should have answered for trying to take down Alexander Ovechkin with his knee. And there should be a way to cut out the overwhelming number of fights that are unnecessary and stupid.
In the meantime, fans can take comfort in the fact that the best is yet to come -the playoffs start in two months.
Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
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