Fighting in hockey

Huggy, as always, nails this stuff.

Hockey is about intimidation--that's got nothing to do with fighting.

If a team thinks they can take liberties with the other team, they will run them out of the rink.

If the other team pushes back and shows they won't be shoved around, there's less likely a chance of fighting because there's no advantage.

The irony about the Leafs is that they're not a tough team. Burke has put together a pretty solid European team: lots of speed and skill but not much toughness.

As the Bruins showed, you can beat a team like Vancouver in the Stanley Cup Final because you can beat them in the alley. And that has nothing to do with fighting.

Best line I ever heard about intimidation was from an unknown player, who, in the playoffs, accused some of his teammates of "hiding under the kitchen table" He may have been talking about Pierre Turgeon but I don't know for sure.

 

If I owned a hockey team, my goal would be to appall the league. I'd make the Syracuse Bulldogs shit their pants.

 

Interesting that the Bruins are being cited as an example of how this "system" works when Marc Savard is likely finished because of a concussion problem that started with a blatant cheap shot to the head on March 7, 2010. The infraction was so egregious that the NHL re-wrote rules <i>during the season</i> to address it.

I looked it up -- Chara was in the lineup for that game. Guess he wasn't wearing his deterrent badge that day.

 

What a goddamn strawman argument. Did you see how the Bruins won the cup last year?

So how many were stopped because of who was in the Bruins lineup?

 

Yeah. Without Marc Savard.

 

No enforcer/fighter/whatever is ever going to stop a guy who is absolutely determined to cheap shot someone. The argument is those hits are cut down significantly when there is a threat of immediate, player-driven retribution.

Also, IIRC, the rules were changed after the season, not during the season.

 

Uh huh....so it works....except when it doesn't work and a team permanently loses one of its best players to a deliberate cheap shot.

Makes perfect sense.

 

So players shouldn't wear helmets because they work except when they don't, right? Or we should eliminate speed limits and drunk driving laws because they obviously don't stop everyone.

I know those are absurd comparisons, but you're the one drawing absurd, concrete conclusions when we're clearly talking about a deterrent, which is never going to stop everyone, only cut down on the number of incidents.

 

What good is the supposed deterrent when it doesn't deter a second-tier talent from targeting the head of your best player and clubbing him into a serious medical problem?

If this is the argument for keeping fighting in hockey, it's a ridiculous one.

 

The key word, Smasher, is deterrent. It doesn't guarantee it will eliminate it, but it will make the frequency of such incidences far less frequent. There is no way one can account for a piece of shit like Cooke, who by the book made what was at the time deemed a clean hit. Dirty as hell, but by the letter of the law, legal. He was not given a penalty on the play and was not even suspended afterwards for the hit. The rule had to be changed after that. Cooke is also a gutless puke who likes to run and hide behind his teammates or officials at the earliest sign of trouble.

 

Not seeing how the employment of designated fighters has any impact on the game, aside from the fights they have among themselves.

If there's a fighter on every team, there's probably a Cooke on every team, too. He doesn't seem to be afraid of any retaliation. People who would be afraid of that retaliation probably wouldn't be clubbing players in the head anyway.

If you want fights in hockey because you enjoy watching guys fight, that's fine. But don't try to pretend that the fighters serve a higher purpose.

 

5 pages in and still no answer to why fighting remains part of hockey.