Why Fighting Does Not Belong In Hockey.

Joseph Beyda recently published an article in the Stanford Daily titled Why Fighting Fits in the NHL.  It was a rebuttal to a colleague, Tom Taylor, who wrote about his initial experience with hockey, published previously on the same website under Why do NHL “stars” Still Have to Act Like Goons?  Beyda thought that his arguments were solid and his defense of fighting was a slam dunk.  I don’t think so.


I read both articles and I’m sure you can easily figure out which one would have received my support.  However with no option to post comments on the Stanford Daily website I decided to prepare a longer response to Beyda’s support of fighting.  Below I have provided some excerpts from his article and followed up with my opinions.

Speaking for hockey fans everywhere, Tom, let me say this: We hear you loud and clear. We get that fighting is easily the most off-putting aspect of the game to outsiders, and most of us have ourselves had trouble coming to terms with it at one point or another.

Beyda should be stating that he is speaking for pro-fighting hockey fans everywhere.  There are lots of fans who love hockey but hate it when players drop the gloves.  To use his terminology, it’s also “off-putting” to a lot of fans who are on the inside of the game.

To make my case for why fighting is not only necessary, but beneficial, in hockey, I’m going to use the very same play that Tom took offense to during Saturday’s game. The sequence began when Colorado Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog skated up the boards and was leveled by Sharks defenseman Brad Stuart.

Beyda goes on to explain that this was a clean hockey hit.  So he thinks that there should be a fight after every good clean hockey hit in order to protect players.  If you buy the argument that fighting “polices” the game, and I certainly don’t, then he is suggesting that hard but clean hockey hits would be all but eliminated by the threat of the enforcer coming after you. 

(It should be noted here that hockey has taken some of the most aggressive action in professional sports by suspending players whose unsafe hits threaten others’ safety. League disciplinarian Brendan Shanahan, once a professional tough guy himself, issued 58 such “Shanabans” last season alone.)

Except that the NHL Department of Player Safety, which states their prime objective as the reduction of head shots in hockey, continues to ignore the fact that fighting involves punches to the head.

By most objective accounts, Stuart’s hit was clean: He was making a play on the puck handler, he stayed on his feet and any contact with Landeskog’s head was incidental. But Colorado defenseman Ryan O’Byrne thought otherwise, and you don’t let a dirty hit to your team captain go unpunished. If you did, after all, who’s to stop the other team from pummeling him again on the next shift?  That sort of retaliation happens all the time in hockey.

So it’s OK that enforcing the rules of the game should be taken out of the hands of the referee and we should allow players to exact revenge.   NHL teams have no faith in the rule book or for trained on-ice officials, who have worked for years to become professional referees, so they employ a player whose primary responsibility is to break the rules by fighting.   He is defending the act of a biased and emotional player to attack an opponent because of a perceived injustice to a teammate.  Allowing that sort of behavior is how we ended up with the Bertuzzi – Moore incident, and there is no reason why it can’t happen again.

He did get something right in the section noted above, “that sort of retaliation happens all the time in hockey”.  That’s why the argument for “policing” is so weak.  The cheap shots and illegal hits continue to happen but fighting exists for revenge and retaliation.  No one is put off by the enforcer, who is more likely to be sitting idle at the end of the bench or up in the press box.  But teams want the privilege of turning them loose.

Tom and others wonder why the chaos of fighting seems so institutionalized in hockey, but shocking as the fisticuffs appear, they’re not nearly as violent as your average dark-alley duel. That’s because the players are still on ice, and if you’ve ever worn a pair of skates you know that a quick change of momentum — say, lunging your fist forward — is a pretty easy way to fall. So in any hockey fight, the first thing the two players do isn’t to go for the haymaker, but to grab their adversary’s jersey with their left hand for stability.

Now that everybody’s safely entangled, the hilarity can begin. Each player stiff-arms their opponent’s right shoulder with their left hand as they swing own their right fist around at their adversary’s head, which is now conveniently out of reach because of said stiff-arm — and usually no longer sports a helmet, the removal of which is a common courtesy to prevent bruised or broken fingers. Most punches miss, and in an even fight there are only two ways to make contact: with a surprise upper-cut by the right hand or a pesky, six-inch jab to the chin with that all-important left paw.

Wow, lots of stuff wrong here.  I’ve been playing hockey for over 40 years and I can change momentum quickly or swing my fist without falling over.  I think that professional hockey players, who are decades younger and play at a level that I could only dream of, would be a lot more stable and mobile.  Regarding the “hilarity”  Spend a few minutes on Google and you can quickly come up with a list of players who suffered fractured jaws, orbital bones or noses during the “hilarity”.  I’m sure that players who have been recently injured, such as Ben Eager (concussion) and Ryan Callahan (dislocated shoulder), are not laughing.

Occasionally a big punch lands; even less often there’s blood. Nine times out of 10 a hockey fight is more like wrestling than boxing, but the frenetic flair of flying fists can be a bit misleading.  And don’t forget, even a Michelin-Man-esque spokesperson for Maxi wouldn’t be wearing as many pads as these guys do.

Last season the NHL reported that 8% of all concussions were caused by fighting. 

O’Byrne, our vigilante, was fortunate enough to channel his anger into a few solid punches. But even though the entire ordeal lasted just 25 seconds — not “several minutes,” as Tom would have you believe — it cost O’Byrne 19 penalty minutes: five for fighting, four for instigating and a 10-minute misconduct. Stuart also got a matching five (the typical penalty for a fight), but by coming clear across the ice to tackle Stuart, O’Byrne put his team down a man for four minutes, twice the length of your typical penalty. Though the Avalanche had dominated the game to that point, Marleau scored twice on that extended power play and the Sharks never looked back.

I think he is digging a hole here.  The example he is using now includes a fight after a clean hit and the act of revenge results in 19 minutes of penalties, having to play short-handed for 4 minutes and ending up giving up 2 power-play goals.  Sure sounds like a good idea to me.

With all that background in mind, here’s how we can explain the crowd’s excitement — which Tom portrayed as barbaric — during the fight.

Most people will stand around and yell when a fight breaks out inside of a bar.  Crowds got caught up in the mayhem and violence during the Vancouver riots after their team lost the Stanley Cup in 2011.  That’s the ugly side of human nature but doesn’t make it right.  You could showcase bikini clad cheerleaders wrestling at centre ice and you would have the same reaction.  But that doesn’t make it part of the game.

Turning points like that scrum change the complexion of a hockey game. And as crude as fights may seem to one eloquent Englishman at The Daily, their consequences — for O’Byrne, likely costing his team the game — are a better deterrent for unwarranted violence than their counterparts in any other sport.

Fighting is all about revenge and retribution.  It does not serve as a deterrent, as I have pointed out in my post Additional Statistics on The Impact of Fighting.  Anyone who watched hockey during the 80’s, the peak period for the role of the enforcer, can tell you that it was one of the most violent decades in the history of the sport.  Fights per game were at all time high at the same time when any player could expect to be slashed, speared, elbowed or just plain attacked.  The game wasn’t safer or cleaner.

There is a growing recognition from many hockey fans that fighting does not fit in the NHL anymore.  Dropping the gloves is a symptom of a game that is loosely enforced and tolerates emotional outbursts of violence.  Increase penalties for cheap shots and have referees step in quickly when players congregate after every whistle, and the reasons to fight will be greatly reduced.   The beauty of the game is in its speed and hard hitting.   The image that the NHL and NHLPA should be promoting is the artistry and skill of those who play one of the hardest professional sports on the planet.  Fighting is not part of the game.