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Reflections on Parros-should fighting be banned?


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I would assume that this site is used by and devoted to, hard core, Canadiens fans. So the people who read and write in these spaces are not once in a while fans, but mostly people who have followed the game closely for many years. From what I've read here for many it is a lifestyle. Personally I've been following the Habs for over 50 years so I too am a very passionate Montreal Canadiens hockey fan.

You never know who is responding to polls about whether fighting should be banned or much more strongly penalized. But I'm interested to know what the hard core fans on this site think about what, if anything, should be done with fighting in hockey.

I grew up watching the Canadiens during the John Beliveau and Henry Richard era who also had John Ferguson on their team. Ferguson was one of my favourite players. And when Montreal played Toronto the Ferguson Eddie Shack fights were classics. Ferguson I believe scored 30 goals one year, in the 6 team league. He was a hockey player who could fight and in my opinion was one of the best. In the 70's I watched the Broad Street Bullies led by Dave Schultz. So I have had, I'm sure like many of you, a long history with hockey. But personaIly, I have come to the place where I think it is time for fighting to be banned from hockey.

Some of my reasons are that I think if we want hockey to be respected and accepted as one of the legitimate top 4, big time sports we have to realize that we look barbaric and we end up putting hockey into the category of roller derby or wrestling when we have staged fights and end up with guys cut and bleeding. To watch John Scott drop his gloves and go after Phil Kessel and then watch Kessel hack with his stick to defend himself against a 6 foot 7 or 8, 250 pound fighter is in my opinion absolutely bush league. It makes us look terrible compared to the NFL or NBA and even the NCAA, all of which are regarded as having and drafting highly trained and dedicated athletes in sports that are accepted as the absolute best in the world. When I see the replays of players being knocked out cold by a punch in a hockey fight it now makes me shudder. When I watched Rene Bourque being sucker punched by Colton Orr last year which resulted in him missing part of the season I can't help but think that this is wrong and should not be allowed. Hockey has to be one of the only sports where being able to fight can help you make a team. It should be on hockey talent and character that opens the door for a player, who has spend years training and practicing and honing his skills, to make a team. Roster spots should not be taken up by someone whose main, and sometimes only ability [John Scott] is to fight. If you fight in the NFL or NCAA you are out of the game and repeated fights get you suspensions.

I read this morning where some former enforcers said that if you take fighting out of hockey you will have absolutely no respect between the players and things will get out of control. Well what do other leagues and sports do? They have no fighting but they have taught the players how to have respect for one another. They get along without fighting very nicely. The best hockey every season is in the playoffs and you rarely see a fight. .

I know there are many opinions on this topic but I'd like to hear what you think, the hard core fans, as to what we should do about fighting in hockey. Personally, I think it's time for fighting to be removed from our sport.

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I don't think there's anything wrong with the entertainment value of fighting, but I don't know how useful it is. That being said, I don't thing removing fighting from hockey will be anything more than a one-off. It won't reduce head injuries, it won't bring fans to the games that are mortified by fighting; removing fighting is a totally reactionary move. Is this where we're at in hockey's evolution? Remove fighting, and add the puck over the glass penalty?!?! How does that benefit the sport? Also, I do agree that if players can't fight, we will see them remove their frustrations in other ways. Scrums will never end, there will be more sucker punching and chirping, basically the game will turn into a bunch of sissies like Patrick Kaleta and Steve Ott. The idea that removing fighting will decrease injuries and bring in fans into the gates is fool hardy. Also, removing fighting from the game is NO guarantee that there won't be fights anyways.

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Well, I don't care how fighting makes the NHL "look." While I totally understand why the NHL worries about its image and its marketing, I have never been able to understand why I should care what non-hockey-fans think about hockey, anymore than I'm able to understand why I, as a fan, should support expansion to ridiculous markets like Phoenix. It should be about what we actual fans want, not about what people who don't care about hockey want. So that's not the line of argument to persuade me.

My view is this. The basic argument for fighting is that hockey is so fast and brutal that it is necessary for players to police themselves by being able to whup the tar out of guys who take dangerous liberties out there (which creates a disincentive to take those liberties). Some opponents of fighting say that you could achieve the same effect by rigorous enforcement of the rules against spearing, cross-checking, and other forms of noxious stickwork. I don't believe that; the NHL has shown itself over and over to be absolutely horrible at enforcing the rules, and the refs are always inclined to "let the players play," especially when the games really matter.

So: if we remove fighting, we will almost certainly see a major increase in stickwork and cheap-shots.

That doesn't mean we should keep fighting, however.

The problem with fighting, to my mind, is that it's dangerous to player safety. The more we learn about concussions and head injuries, the less defensible it is to allow guys to go out there and hit each other repeatedly on the head. We always have to remember that these guys aren't gladiators for our entertainment; they are above all sons, husbands, and fathers, human beings with lives to live, and we have absolutely no right to watch them destroy their brains and compromise their quality of life just so we can watch a few sideshow fights at a hockey game.

So my feeling that it's all about what protects players better. If it can be empirically demonstrated that leagues without fighting suffer a very substantially higher number of serious injuries due to stick-work, then we should not ban fighting. In fact we probably should get rid of the instigator rule to allow players to police themselves more effectively. If, on the other hand, leagues without fighting do NOT show a higher level of stick-work and cheap-shot related injuries - which doesn't mean there isn't more stick-work, just that that stick-work does not produce a major spike in serious injuries - then we should get rid of fighting.

Pretty simple logic, then. What leads to more serious injuries - fighting or stick-work? That's the question. I don't know the answer to it, but that's how I'd approach this issue.

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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.

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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.

By the same sort of logic, we should also allow goalies not to wear masks and players not to wear helmets, right? And why not electrify the puck while we're at it, to add to the risk?

No one is arguing that we should remove ALL risk. It's definitely a balance. But fighting is a minor side-show in terms of entertainment value; it's only integral to the game insofar as it's part of that self-policing dynamic I discussed above. But if the cure turns out to be worse than the disease - if fighting does more harm than stick-work - then the case for fighting as anything other than a pointlessly dangerous sideshow dissipates. Maybe you're happy seeing people's lives needlessly compromised so you can have an extra 15 seconds of entertainment in a hockey game. I'm not.

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I don't think that this injury impacts fighting at all. The injury came from the fall not the actual fight. That play could have happened with a scuffle in front of the net, a hip check, or anything else that could upend a player. Yes Orr "pulled" him down and that is more likely in a fight but it was just a freak accident caused by Parros having his eyes closed and not see Orr falling putting him off balance giving him no time to react.

So I don't see why this would change anyone's opinion on fighting. Hope Parros recovers.

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I really doubt it's going anywhere. Parros wasn't injured because of the actual fight, it was a freak accident. Any vote to ban fighting has to pass through the NHLPA. There's no way a union is going support any measure that reduces jobs; that's not just in hockey, but in real life. The equivalent would be kickers in the NFL. Long range field goals are rare, and in college and high school, "skill guys" who can play other positions kick extra points and field goals. So why have a designated "kicker" or "enforcer?" I am fine with seeing the enforcer's quality of life diminished, IF THEY SO CHOOSE. No one is assigned to be an enforcer, it is an active choice that makes these guys millions of dollars. The NHL is not in the business of protecting the players from themselves. The players will be against it, because it won't just affect the enforcers. Do the following players have jobs/break into the league in the first place if fighting is banned?:

-Deryk Engelland

-Ryan White

-Adam MacQuaid

-Paul Mara

-Zenon Konopka

-Brandon Prust

Without fighting, these guys are fringe fourth liners/#6 defensemen. They choose to fight, and that's how they earn some of their play. Moreover, what concerns me about a potential ban is the players that replace these guys in those fringe roles. Hello Chris Campoli and Andreas Enqvist!

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So: if we remove fighting, we will almost certainly see a major increase in stickwork and cheap-shots.

I'm not so sure about that, and there's little evidence to base that on. Is the NCAA that much of a dirtier league? The NHL could couple a ban on fighting with a crackdown on cheap-shots. There are already plenty of dirty plays in the league with fighting as a supposed deterrent.

This argument is generally advanced by the old-school hockey types - 'you don't know the consequence when you meddle with the game!' The game has already been radically changed over the years. These same people resisted at every juncture - we most recently saw it with the long overdue visor rule. Fighting results in an easily quantifiable amount of serious injuries - not to mention the more insidious ones that lead to early deaths and suicides and a severely compromised quality of life.

Players are afraid to speak out against the status quo because they would be labeled a 'pansy' or some equivalent, or be targetted, or perhaps they have teammates or friends whose main role is to fight. I don't believe there is a total consensus among players about fighting's role.

I find fighting entertaining like most people, but I recognize that there's no good reason for it beyond mere entertainment. Maybe it will take lawsuits from former players like we saw in the NFL recently, or maybe it will take an on-ice death or paralysis, but eventually hockey fans will take the head injuries it causes seriously. Hockey is a violent sport that contains inherent risks, but it's only responsible to minimize those risks.

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bbp is right that this was a freak event, not a "fighting" injury per se. However, there is a wider discussion to be had about the impact of fighting upon player safety - a discussion that preceded this, based on the nauesating reports about the state of the brains of people like Probert and Boogard, as well as the more general increase in awareness about the consequences of concussions. That's a discussion worth having, whether or not the Parros injury is the best example of why fighting might be best eliminated.

EDIT: Neech, you may be right that stickwork won't go up if fighting is eliminated. As I say, that's an empirical question - something to be investigated. Dave Thomlinson on Vancouver radio played in both the NHl and Europe and said he could not believe the stickwork there, so that at least suggests a linkage. But even if removing fighting does increase stickwork, that would only matter, in my opinion, if increased stickwork leads to more injuries than fighting does. There's a kind of pseudo-moral discourse out there that sees fighting as "honest" and stickwork as "dirty;" but I don't care about that bafflegab; what matters is which model is more dangerous to player safety.

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For me, the fact that fighting is not permitted in the other major sports, ie, football, soccer,baseball,basketball, etc, there is no need for it to happen in hockey. I don't but all the self policing arguements, hockey is not special in any way that requires fighting to be permitted. other sports are just as tough and physical.

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It is NOT all about what protects the players. With or without fighting, hockey is a game where large strong men fly into each other wearing sharp blades on their feet and weilding sharpened sticks. The sport itself has inherent dangers, some of which are far worse than those brought on by fighting (see Clint Malarchuk, Richard Zednik, Trent McLeary, and many others). We must acknowledge that these dangers are risks that, while we hate to see their effects, we accept in order maintain the quality of the sport; in other words, to maintain the quality of its entertainment value. Otherwise, it could be said that the best way to protect the players is to ban hockey. They wouldn't get their throats slashed by errant skates if they had careers as plumbers or electricians.

Hockey is a rough game, involving punishing (legal) bodychecks, intimidation, frustration, antagonizing, and anger. Putting everything you have into winning at all costs. Men employed as career athletes, placed in this type of environment, must be expected to get into fights on occasion. It's a part hockey, and if it were somehow "eliminated" it would have a ripple effect, diminishing the quality of the sport in many ways, and not just by the probable increase in stickwork. Fighting's got to stay. Might as well enjoy it.

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Hockey is a rough game, involving punishing (legal) bodychecks, intimidation, frustration, antagonizing, and anger. Putting everything you have into winning at all costs. Men employed as career athletes, placed in this type of environment, must be expected to get into fights on occasion. It's a part hockey, and if it were somehow "eliminated" it would have a ripple effect, diminishing the quality of the sport in many ways, and not just by the probable increase in stickwork. Fighting's got to stay. Might as well enjoy it.

Is there a reason for this, when athletes of other contact sports don't have such expectations? That it's 'a part of hockey' doesn't hold water for me, since so many other things have been changed about the game over the years.

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By the same sort of logic, we should also allow goalies not to wear masks and players not to wear helmets, right? And why not electrify the puck while we're at it, to add to the risk?

No one is arguing that we should remove ALL risk. It's definitely a balance. But fighting is a minor side-show in terms of entertainment value; it's only integral to the game insofar as it's part of that self-policing dynamic I discussed above. But if the cure turns out to be worse than the disease - if fighting does more harm than stick-work - then the case for fighting as anything other than a pointlessly dangerous sideshow dissipates. Maybe you're happy seeing people's lives needlessly compromised so you can have an extra 15 seconds of entertainment in a hockey game. I'm not.

My point is that we are happy to make the decision as long as the consequent belongs to someone else, as soon as we are part of the consequence (driving 50 on the 401) we renege. You are still at risk going down the 401 at 50, but you are safer. nobody said anything about all risk. Parros could have just as easy slipped on the blueline and done the same damage.

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I am not a fan of removing fighting in general, but fighting has become a different thing now. You never saw takedowns in the 70s and 80s. Now it's a regularly used move. Staged fights seldom happened. You hit my good player while I was on the bench, now I will go out and fight your goon and things will change. It doesn't happen. Colton Orr and George Parros fighting each other does nothing to stop cheapshots. I believe the instigator rule has hurt the game. Players could properly police and instantly deal with cheapshots. I think in the end fighting will be removed for money reasons. You have to think that someone will sue the league over this one day.then it will no longer be a debate. I love Olympic hockey and playoffs. And there isn't usually a bunch of fighting there. I love a good hockey fight too, but really why are Scott and Parros and Orr in the league?

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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.

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For me, the fact that fighting is not permitted in the other major sports, ie, football, soccer,baseball,basketball, etc, there is no need for it to happen in hockey. I don't but all the self policing arguements, hockey is not special in any way that requires fighting to be permitted. other sports are just as tough and physical.

The NFL is just as tough and physical, and there are a few "football fights" every game. There are fights in every sport. Hockey is a testosterone driven sport, so what's next? Banning push-ups and taking your shirt off? Hockey is a worse sport if there's no fighting, who wants to see a bunch of scrums and "chirping" every game? I don't even think it's debate worthy, there's no way any sanctions are going to be taken against fighting because of what happened to George Parros. Maybe if Crosby got a concussion in a fight, they would sanction it.

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For me, the fact that fighting is not permitted in the other major sports, ie, football, soccer,baseball,basketball, etc, there is no need for it to happen in hockey. I don't but all the self policing arguements, hockey is not special in any way that requires fighting to be permitted. other sports are just as tough and physical.

If you are suggesting one size fits all, please advise major league baseball that they need a salary cap.

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Frankly, I don't think you can remove fighting from the sport...even if you really want to. Perhaps you could regulate it so there are less incidences. Stopping it entirely isn't realistic. Comparing it to other sports is also unrealistic. Football is physical but very slow paced allowing time for guys to calm down, guys don't carry sticks and they wear indestructible pads/helmets even moreso then hockey. Baseball, soccer and basketball simply don't compare. Only Lacrosse or Rugby would compare...and fights do happen in those sports too. Hockey is simply a faster pace game then the big 4, played on a relatively small surface, with equipment that allows guys to fly into each other, allows that physical contact in the rules and guys carry sticks. Do I think fighting should be promoted as part of the sport for it's entertainment value...of course not. BUT, fighting WILL happen from the passion and emotion of the game...fighting is a sympton of the postive passion and energy you want to cultivate. The biggest problem I have is the "staged" fighting...that should be banned entirely. Too often a guy takes some liberties on a shift and the two designated fighters stage a fight as though it solves something...bleh. If they want to cut it back then simply cut to commercial during the stoppages when fights break out...stop promoting it and penalize teams and players alike for the staged fighting.

Having said all that, I think people who use the Parros injury some sort of justification to end all fighting in hockey is senseless...the injury was a fluke. Maybe they should change the rules so guys don't play on hard ice, or in an area surrounded by boards they might bump into. Accidents happen...felt really bad for Parros watching that and I hope he bounces back to resume his career.

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The toughest sport in the world is probably rugby which has no fighting. Of course they do have players biting blood capsules to fake injury though.

In other words, like BlueKross said, one size does not fit all.

Fights DO break out from time to time in Rugby. Less then you might think given the sport...but they still happen from time to time.

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I honestly don't care.

If fighting was removed tomorrow I wouldn't be sad or happy. I think my support for fighting comes from hearing Damien Cox cry about it because he was picked on in grade school.

What I find interesting though is that there isn't a single person who says, "Fighting should be removed from the game" when an agitator/pest like Matt Cooke gets knocked out by Evander Kane. Makes you wonder the reactions from people when there's no fighting and a guy like Matt Cooke is getting away with high elbows and slewfoots. What do you hope to happen to him now? That someone hits him with their stick? Because they surely can't punch him anymore.

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I would love to know where everyone gets the idea that fights don't happen in football-basketball-baseball. They do quite often. And in baseball it is generally a bench clearing brawl, something we haven't seen in hockey in a long time. I hear that it is forbidden in these sports. Doesn't stop it. It is against the rules in hockey as well however the penalties are not as severe. In the other sports you get ejected. In hockey you get 5 min and sometime a 10 or game misconduct. Banning fighting is not going to stop it but it will slow it down. I would suggest that we simply increase the penalty for fighting. 1st fight 10 mins, 2nd fight game misconduct, won't stop it but it will definitely slow it down. The skill players who fight ( for instance Jerome Iginla) will not risk getting kicked out of the game, anf the team do not want them in the box for 10 mins. This way I think any fight would be a real fight not a staged event. Sometimes tempers flare and a fight is the answer ok but this is the punishment.

But please stop saying that the other sports do not have fighting cause that is just bs. :habslogo:

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Fighting in other sports is totally different. You never see two players circle each other and try to punch each other's face while everyone else watches. You may see a few punches thrown but those players get suspended.

I agree that increasing penalties for fighting would be a good first step - in addition to misconducts they should give small suspensions to players with too many fights.

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