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Maybe I'm in the minority, but I love hockey with the fights. I love games that have line brawls. As Chicoutimi Cucumber had mentioned, I don't care about non fans liking our sport, or if our sport becomes the #2 watched sport. I like Hockey the way it is with the fighting. I started watching hockey in the eighties when the enforcers were glorified, and that is a style or brand of sport I was drawn to. If a guy has a chance to make buttloads of money because he fits a role, and he DOES have a choice whether or not he wants to take the risks involved. Then so be it. Accidents are unfortunate, but they know the risks and they do it anyway. So my opinion is leave the sport alone, Bettman has done enough already.

The NHL has taken measures to protect players during fights with the new minor for removing your helmet, but the guys are still whipping them off. I don't know that we'll see fighting actually removed from the game before an "important" (i.e. star) player's career or even life is jeopardy as of the result of the fight. The NHL is more reactionary than it is preventative. Headshots became a problem, so they worked to reduce them. Players becoming injured on icing plays was a problem, and it took them awhile to finally introduce the hybrid model. Fighting has been in the game for a long time. What happens if it's removed completely? Do cheap shots reign? Do stick-swinging incidents become more frequent (we're looking at you, Kessel)? Will everyone just play nice? Can Patrick Roy keep his job in a fightless NHL? I think the league could be afraid of the consequences of removing fighting. They might see it as a pandora's box situation that will lead to a scenerio where even more rules and regulations will have to be defined. It's sad to say, but I think it will take that career or life ending injury at the NHL level to trigger action on the part of both the league and the players to remove fighting from the game.

I won't be upset either way. I enjoy watching hockey fights when the have "purpose". My definition of purpose in this sense means to defend a team mate or retaliate after a cheap shot because yes the officiating, suspensions and the lack of care this league has for most players is bewildering!

What I want to know, is when are the bench clearing brawls coming back?

Yeah, this logic seems to be: you can't completely protect the players from all risk, so there's no point in trying to protect them from ANY risk. The defect in this reasoning is obvious. It's never "all or nothing." It's about exercising intelligent judgement without undermining the essence of the game. Foofram argues that fighting is part of the essence of the game, but doesn't explain why. And I don't see why it has to be, myself, any more than the red line or the "no forward pass" rule did. In fact, fighting isn't part of the intrinsic structure of the game in the manner of, say, bodychecking, another dangerous injury-prone activity whose removal I would adamantly oppose. The proof that fighting is not part of this intrinsic structure lies in the fact that it's already against the rules; and that fights hardly ever happen when games mean the most (playoffs, Olympics). I also agree that the instigator rule has impeded fighting's ability to serve as a self-policing mechanism. That's a dumb rule and never should have been implemented.

Just going to throw this out---- would the public stomach placing a govener on all vechicles that would prevent anyone travelling faster than say 50mph. That would clearly save lives. How about not letting race cars go faster than 100MPH--- clearly saving lives - It is obvious that the public will trade off some risk.