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There were 280 fights last season with 227 games featuring fights. 10 years prior there were 664 fights with 473 fights with games. League revenue has close to doubled in the past 10 years. Ratings averaged around 1.8 million viewers last season for Hockey Night in Canada. That number was around a 1 million in 2008. Now pre-lockout it was around 1.9 million, so we're back to the numbers it was getting back then. And back then, there were 789 fights in the season. And back then, there was a lot less to watch and it was easier to get an audience share than now. There were less fights this season than the 12-13 shortened season. By 67. Fighting is dropping at an alarming rate but ratings are up, revenue has doubled, and as new arenas with more seats are built, the league keeps filling them for the most part.

I was actually listening to a Craig Custance podcast with Lawrence Gilman, who used to be the Canucks A.GM, and was hired by the league to help with the expansion draft rules. Basically, GMs made rules... and then he did an excercise where he looked at every team, looked at who they were likely to protect and projected what the rules would mean and what Vegas would look like. He mentioned a few things. 1) the original draft of the rules was even more generous to vegas. It required teams to put a certain amount of salary exposed, it would have made them even better as better players were exposed. The process he went through made the rules tougher on Vegas. 2) McPhee started to make his deals with teams at the trade deadline. This really helped them. These deals were registered with the league, but not announced. This was so if a GM got fired between the end of the season and the expansion draft, the deal would still be in place with the new regime. 3) One thing Gilman said would really hurt Vegas would be teams trading away players prior to expansion. Sort of like our Beaulieu to Buffalo deal. Guys one team couldnt' protect but another team could. This happened in a few cases, but not as many as Gilman anticipated. The really smart thing McPhee did was "The Pledge". Any team he made a deal with to take one of their players... or things like that... he forced them to agree that they would not make any other deals of this type to circumvent protection lists. This helped him keep as many players available as possible. 4) He leveraged his cap space and used it as a weapon. Taking on contracts like David Clarkson and Mikhail Grabovski in order to get better deal from the Blue Jackets and Islanders. Gilman thought a team might do that, but he praised McPhee as he got absolute max value out of doing it. 5) He built a team. He didn't just take the best players available necessarily, but he focused on a real concept of what he wanted from his team from day 1.... that concept was speed. 6) He maxed out on the number of D he was allowed to draft under the rules. Because of the rules, D were the best assets available. 7) It was one team of expansion, so he was able to plan his picks very methodically. He didn't have to worry about a second expansion team competing for the same group of players, like previous two team expansions had to. This allowed him and Vegas to keep running the same scenario over and over and absolutely maximize every asset they would get out of the draft. Gilman's main takeaway was that McPhee did an absolutely perfect job under the rules. He basically didn't make one bad move. At the same time he took advantage of team's like Florida and Columbus and Minnesota who gave him extra assets not to take their players. He felt teams overreacted to losing one player, and should have just lost that player and not made these multi-asset trades. The last thing (and this is important for the Habs), teams only had one year to plan for expansion. They didn't know the rules. Now GMs have 2-3 years to know what they will be facing, and can manipulate their rosters well in advance. This wasn't from Gilman, but my on though on how this applies to two players on the Habs... Kotkaniemi and Suzuki. The Habs are better off putting Suzuki in the OHL, where he won't accumulate a year of pro experience... and Kotkaniemi in Finland... where he won't accumulate a year of pro experience (he would in the AHL)... under the old expansion draft rules. Depending when Seattle comes in, this is the difference between protecting the players or them being exempt from the draft and giving us more protection slots.

Love me some Paul Byron. He’s definitely earned it.

This is what I expected a Byron extension to look like. He certainly has earned this.

Same contract length as Drouin, only Price and Weber longer.

I am pretty sure his fight against FLA helped MB decide on this As MB haters would say Because MB doesn't make good decisions ever!

Brook just named Captain of Warriors. (Wonder if coach Tim Hunter named him Captain? Which, have to assume would bode well, with Hunter also being World Junior head coach this X-mas)

That seems like great value for a 20 goal guy, but with so many wingers and a "retooling" year it seemed like a bit of a no-brainer to trade him and make room for some youth.

I won't lie, I'm 5'6'' and never really fought anyone in my life exept some scrums after the whistle in bantam league hockey. But I like fighting in general (boxing, UFC, MLB brawls and of course NHL fights). But I also don't consider it essential to hockey at all. What I enjoy most is when very good players, team leaders, drop the mits to defend a teammate or to change the momentum, to wake their team up. I absolutely loved Iginla for that reason. The good ol' days of Tkatchuk, Lecavalier, Clark, etc. The main change I'd made is that I'd be in favor of a 10 minutes penalty for fighting instead of 5 minutes. That's 1/6 of a game right there. Make people think twice about dropping them.

And to keep it with the Habs, Bordeleau is now a skills consultant with Montreal.

Alzner was such a terrible signing.

Kokiniemi is looking better and better by the minute. Clearly preseason is preseason and should be taken for what it is. With that said, the kid looks to be on par with the pace. Has a great stick and seems to be following the play with nice anticipation... couple that with 3 shots off the bar and he was was inches Away from leaving a real impression on the score sheet as well. After listening to MB interview with marinaro last week, I would not be surprised at all to see koki start the season here if his play doesn’t drop off...

Yeah it was, I just tried to make a point that if we took out fighting in hockey would fans stop watching it. For me i don't think it would make a difference. I don't think fans would miss it. Not this generation of fans anyway.

So we both agree that the NHL today doesn't need fighting to bring in fans. That if they got rid of fighting it wouldn't make a big impact in the NHL

I wrote a bunch of stuff back in the day on the expansion drafts because they are so much fun, and just want to add that the first GM to really take advantage of this was David Poile with the 1998 expansion draft of the Nashville Predators. The Chicago Blackhawks gave Nashville Sergei Krivokrasov so they wouldn't take Chris Terreri. Terreri ended up selected by the Minnesota Wild in the 2000 expansion draft and would be out of the league by 2001. Krivokrasov had a 25 goal season with Nashville but was gone after two years. But Greg Johnson, the guy they took, was a big part of the early Predators and became their second captain. The LA Kings didn't want Garry Galley selected so they gave up Kimmo Timonen and Jan Vopat. It's still to this day one of the most lopsided trades in NHL history. Galley retired in 2001. Vopat was nothing special, but Kimmo Timonen was the best defenceman on Nashville until Weber and Suter came along and put up five solid seasons. The guy they selected, Chabot, they ended up putting on waivers and the Kings took him back. And finally, to bring this back to the Habs, Montreal gave Nashville Sebastien Bordeleau to they wouldn't select Peter Popovic, who the Habs would trade less than a month later to the New York Rangers for a fifth round pick. Bordeleau had one good season with Nashville and was gone. Who did the Predators take instead? Tomas Vokoun, who is still the second best goalie in Predators history, behind only Rinne.

Given that fights aren't all that common any more anyway, I think the answer is pretty clearly 'no.'

Only if PACs and Galchenyuk are injured.

Another thought on the libertarian position is that we're not talking about individual rights per se. Fighting only exists in hockey because the rules of the game are lenient towards it. Within that context, guys 'choose' to fight. (Although I definitely take Machine's point that 'choice' gets fuzzy here, when you are talking about a combination of peer pressure and fear of losing one's job). But if we change the rules, they will still be 'free' to choose to fight - it's just the incentive structure will have changed so as to make that choice even dumber than it is now, e.g., by automatic game ejection, suspension, whatever. If banning fighting is an infringement upon choice, then shouldn't we also allow deliberate attempts to injure, without suspensions, on the grounds that 'these are men, they consent to that risk.? For that matter, isn't the offside rule is an infringement upon players' 'choice' to pass the puck to a head man across two zones? A truly consistent application of the libertarian position would seem to remove any rules from the game at all, except maybe the concept of 'most goals wins.' Once you accept the principle of regulating behaviour on the ice, the debate turns to which kinds of regulations we want - not some inviolable 'right to choose' anything we want.

Wow, I got a poll to work! Hooray

That's the spirit!

I do NOT want the Habs to goon-up but I do not mind loosing a couple of games in the loose-for-Hughes year if these fly-weight tumblers (cannot call them fighters) go bezerk When Kotka and Suzuki are with the club, the I would like to have mid-6 forwards and bottom-4 rear-guards able to protect them Inenof my old-time favourite players is Nilan, and I do NOT want a player like that in 2018. But I am fine with Shaw and Domi on the lineup

And how is it a bad think to have a couple of these nasty, unpredictable, gritty/dirty players? Instead of what some call "choir boys" can't-do-no-wrong players? I do not like useless goons in our lineup or predatory players; bit skilled middle-6 players that can be nasty: yesss!

Flying elbow to the back of the head on Brock McGinn when he didn't have the puck. OHL only gave him four games because they are always soft on London Knights players. Domi once grabbed a guys beard in Calgary to goad him into a fight but he wouldn't. Domi I guess wasn't mad enough to pop him. Don't forget how he broke his hand, which was fighting Garnet Hathaway. Like I said, he's a goon in spirit. He will throw a predatory hit if he feels justified. He will grab players and tell them to fight. He will risk his career to punch a guy during a 1-1 tie at the end of the second because Hathway tried to hit him. Arizona lost that game in OT by the way so good job energizing the bench. This won't be his last incident. He likely will be a good boy until December or something when a Bruins game comes up. Maybe he can start throwing with his other hand and break that so he can join Karl Alzner in needing someone to open his pickle jars. This feels like we traded Pierre Turgeon for Shayne Corson again. At least we did it one for one this time instead of gifting Conroy.

Ya, I noticed that after. No idea how that makes sense to someone

Football and rugby have contact in the game to make a play, they don't have a weapon in their hands and use it like hockey players do unnecessarily. Like I said earlier, if I get hit with a weapon on purpose, as a man I believe I have the right to defend myself and to ensure it doesn't happen again. I'm not going to cry to the ref and hope the bad man sits in the penalty box for 2 minutes to think about what he did. I do hate staged fights though and think those are what should be out of the game. Heat of the moment fights? Oh baby pass the popcorn

Okay. You're posting online. I used to have the ability to hack pretty much anyone I wanted to. So because you know the dangers of hackers on the internet, it's okay if I hack you? If I take your credit information? Browsing history? You knew the risks. You know people like me exist. You put yourself out there and didn't protect yourself properly, right? That's the problem with that viewpoint. And almost any viewpoint that places the responsibility on victims. It's literally about allowing people to exploit others until someone goes too far. And when it comes to fighting in hockey, for decades it was an expectation. Fight or don't play. Fight or your teammates won't respect you. And guys got hurt. Guys hurt others when they didn't want to. And then had decades of a career to deal with the fallout. And while you think personal responsibility, Derek Boogaard downed pills to numb himself from who he was and eventually died. When they looked at his brain he had suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy at a level worse than Bob Probert when he died at 45. Derek was 28. Georges Laraque, who all things considered seems to have got out healthy, said he never liked being an enforcer. Ask any player who had expectations to fight and they will tell you they didn't goto the ice sober because the anxiety in fighting was near impossible to deal with unless intoxicated. Personal choice though. Steve Downie, a guy who I hated when he played from junior to the NHL, later expressed his resentment for hurting people and how much of hockey culture (Rock em Sock em) impresses on you the importance of hurting people to help your team. That yes, it was his choice, but that choice was wedged between a toxic hockey culture that wants players to murder each other on the ice so we can call them warriors when watching their Youtube clips and they are six feet under. But hey. Personal responsibility. This is men stuff. Watching men beat each other up and then kill themselves after. This is what we do.

Olympic hockey is the best hockey because skill wins games. There is no cap system and the best teams can have a lineup full of skilled players. The worst teams often get beat 7-0 without any recourse. Half the audience will see that as entertainment whereas the other half will see that type of outcome as boring. For the players on the losing team, this type of environment makes it difficult to change the momentum. The role of 3rd and 4th line players in the NHL is evolving but with a cap system in place, teams are always going to need role players who bring different things to the table. They can’t have Olympic caliber squads. Deslauriers feels as though his spot in the lineup is far from secure? He wants more than 60 games with 22 in the press box? He demonstrates another element he can bring to the table. The beneficial impact a fight can have within a game is unmeasurable through one’s television. It’s not that I absolutely adore fighting, but it can have an emotional boost on your squad and it can also have an impact on the opponent knowing the possibility is always there when it comes to having to answer a question. The argument as to whether or not having someone who can drop the gloves (and play puck) is impactful would be no different than questioning whether or not dump and chase is ever an effective strategy anymore when it comes to making the defense play on its heels in order to have to retrieve a puck in the corner while taking a hit to make a play. Dump and chase looks outdated on our television, as well as to possession lovers but it’s sure not outdated for Victor Mete who has to backpedal and take that hit in the corner. By the end of the game, maybe Victor doesn’t want to retrieve that puck anymore. We all agree that the Parros’ and Laraques are not of much value but even Vegas and Pittsburgh were the last two teams to have Ryan Reaves on their team. Reaves was scratched for many games on that Vegas team. So was oversized goon Tomas Tatar.

I'll take myths that hockey fans believe for 1000 Alex. "Fights help teams win"

It's truly sad if the only hope for the Habs benefiting from the trade is an injury to Galy. We all know they lost the trade big time. Skill for stupid toughness that only hurts the team. They just have to hope their PK and Price will keep bailing them out from Domi's dumb moves for the rest of his time in Montreal. Bold Prediction Domi will have a shorter career than his dad, because at least his dad could fight and the league needed goons back then.

I think you're a bit hard on Domi, who did get 40+ points last season and is more than just 'stupid toughness.' He's a decent player. But the trade is basically a downgrade in talent for a supposed upgrade in 'attitude;' in other words, more dumb-ass thinking from dumb-ass management, a prototypical MB move in that it doesn't solve any actual problems and weakens our overall talent level. Fortunately for Mr. Attitude, Galy may be seriously injured, so he can smugly point to that as 'proof' of his shrewd GMing.

Boooo!

I'm not gonna act like I don't enjoy fighting. I've watched pro wrestling my whole life, watched UFC since the first show went on VHS, I've watched the precursor to UFC like RINGS and UWF-i and Pancrase. One of my earliest memories is when Nolan Ryan put Robin Ventura in a headlock for running up to him after a bean pitch (the best part of that story is that the dugouts cleared and there was a pileup with Ryan on the bottom. Ryan said he was suffocating underneath and going dark and if it wasn't for Bo Jackson grabbing guys by one hand and tossing them off him, he believed he would have died) I have been in fights, I've broken up fights, I've had to stand up for friends. Fighting happens. While I believe the momentum thing is BS and just an old wives tale we have told to make it seem like fighters are necessary (if players need a fight to realize they need to win something is wrong), I understand when a game reaches a boiling point and tempers explode. It happens in any Athletic competition and it is not just a men thing (I used to goto girls softball games in high school because there was a better chance of seeing two people punch each other in that than our junior B hockey). But with hockey we mythologized the fight. We act like if there isn't some meathead on the bench to punch someone then every star player is going to die on the ice with no call. We act like if someone does throw punches after a player on the team got hurt it makes anything better. It doesn't. If we were honest and said it was just two people getting way too angry to play hockey and that's it, I wouldn't have so much of an issue. And as someone who has had a serious concussion, and has watched people I know who had serious concussions begin to deteriorate in their 30s mentally, and fear of it happening myself, I just can't watch a hockey fight anymore and think I'm seeing just some gladiatorial battle with everyone hunky dory after. I think back to the former NHL hockey player I met two years ago at a banquet in his 40s whose wife had to tie his shoelaces privately because he couldn't do it, with her repeatedly telling him to go see the specialist again. You can still watch his fights on YouTube though. And people came up to him to tell them how much they loved watching him play hockey. And I wonder if he could go back and protect his brain, would he? And better question, would any coach or locker room in the 90s/early 00s even allow him to play safer?

He is tough to compare at this point but I think maybe Michael Peca would be the comparison. A guy with skill who does some seriously boneheaded decisions from time to time that gets remembered more than anything skill wise he does on the ice. Maybe sprinkle a little Darcy Tucker in there but Tucker knew how to get the puck in the net. He isn't a goon in role but he's definitely a goon in spirit. I'm guessing this will be just the first of the moronic decisions he makes as a Hab. Him and Shaw on the ice at the same time will be like two time bombs ready to blow each other up. The perfect guys to have when you want to go nowhere but down in the standings.