Fighting in Hockey
The big debate which is going around the NHL and various mainstream hockey media outlets is whether or not fighting has a place in hockey.
You lucky people are going to get my opinion - it's pretty short: NO.
If I wanted to watch two men fighting I'd be watching boxing or UFC or something else. There is fighting in hockey right now, and I'm glad that it's not as extensive as it used to be. I understand the role that it currently plays (it's not just random violence and it does have an effect on how both teams are playing), I just don't think it's necessary. A really fantastic play can have exactly the same pumping up effect as a fight. So can an impressive and massive legal bodycheck. It seems to me that using fights as a way to pump up your team and fans is the recourse of an unskilled team. Obviously skilled teams do it too, but it's cheap. And I don't like it.
This has all come to a head in the media because of a few crazy factors:
- the probable suicides/accidental death due to drug abuse of 3 NHL enforcers over the course of this summer. I don't think any of them are officially suicide, but it's gotten a lot of former enforcers to talk about their substance abuse problems and how that was related to their jobs.
- Brendan Shanahan, the new Head Disciplinarian for the NHL has been handing out a whole slew of fines and suspensions for bad hits. And has been openly talking about their decisions, which is super cool.
- There have been a lot of high profile concussions of late, including Sidney Crosby who is one of the NHL's young superstars.
- Don Cherry is an ass and has called the former enforcers who spoke up about their addictions and the problems with fighting in hockey hypocrites and "pukes" on National Television.
First of all - Don Cherry needs to be fired. He's said a lot of terrible things in Coach's Corner over the years and has been less and less coherent about it (and this is ignoring the fact that he can't pronounce any of the names of even some of the most high profile players). But this is just too far. One of the guys he criticized pointed out that no one in Canada takes Don too seriously, and that's certainly true. But you still should not be insulting people for speaking out about their substance abuse problems. That is completely inappropriate. And I don't think I need to say anything else about that.
The other thing that weirds me out about the media coverage of this issue is that they seem to be conflating too different problems: fighting in hockey, and concussions (a substantial number of which happen on legal hits).
The coverage is all getting very weird. I even read an article in MacLean's magazine (a Canadian news magazine which used to be quite good) about how Stephen Harper, our Prime Minister, should step in to help hockey deal with these issues. Because otherwise hockey would flounder as a sport, o one would watch it and parents would refuse to let their children play because it's too dangerous. They even compared him to Roosevelt helping to fix American Football. Obviously this makes sense because hockey is a sport that is in its infancy, has no real fanbase and until recently was considered safer than snuggling with fluffy bunnies (okay, bad example). < / sarcasm >
I'm sure that I had more to say when I first started writing this post. But's that's probably enough for today. Especially since I' reasonably certain that![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hobbitbabe is the only one reading this who has much interest in hockey at all. But yes. Hockey is a bit crazy at the moment (well, always - but still) and people are over-reacting all over the place.
You lucky people are going to get my opinion - it's pretty short: NO.
If I wanted to watch two men fighting I'd be watching boxing or UFC or something else. There is fighting in hockey right now, and I'm glad that it's not as extensive as it used to be. I understand the role that it currently plays (it's not just random violence and it does have an effect on how both teams are playing), I just don't think it's necessary. A really fantastic play can have exactly the same pumping up effect as a fight. So can an impressive and massive legal bodycheck. It seems to me that using fights as a way to pump up your team and fans is the recourse of an unskilled team. Obviously skilled teams do it too, but it's cheap. And I don't like it.
This has all come to a head in the media because of a few crazy factors:
- the probable suicides/accidental death due to drug abuse of 3 NHL enforcers over the course of this summer. I don't think any of them are officially suicide, but it's gotten a lot of former enforcers to talk about their substance abuse problems and how that was related to their jobs.
- Brendan Shanahan, the new Head Disciplinarian for the NHL has been handing out a whole slew of fines and suspensions for bad hits. And has been openly talking about their decisions, which is super cool.
- There have been a lot of high profile concussions of late, including Sidney Crosby who is one of the NHL's young superstars.
- Don Cherry is an ass and has called the former enforcers who spoke up about their addictions and the problems with fighting in hockey hypocrites and "pukes" on National Television.
First of all - Don Cherry needs to be fired. He's said a lot of terrible things in Coach's Corner over the years and has been less and less coherent about it (and this is ignoring the fact that he can't pronounce any of the names of even some of the most high profile players). But this is just too far. One of the guys he criticized pointed out that no one in Canada takes Don too seriously, and that's certainly true. But you still should not be insulting people for speaking out about their substance abuse problems. That is completely inappropriate. And I don't think I need to say anything else about that.
The other thing that weirds me out about the media coverage of this issue is that they seem to be conflating too different problems: fighting in hockey, and concussions (a substantial number of which happen on legal hits).
The coverage is all getting very weird. I even read an article in MacLean's magazine (a Canadian news magazine which used to be quite good) about how Stephen Harper, our Prime Minister, should step in to help hockey deal with these issues. Because otherwise hockey would flounder as a sport, o one would watch it and parents would refuse to let their children play because it's too dangerous. They even compared him to Roosevelt helping to fix American Football. Obviously this makes sense because hockey is a sport that is in its infancy, has no real fanbase and until recently was considered safer than snuggling with fluffy bunnies (okay, bad example). < / sarcasm >
I'm sure that I had more to say when I first started writing this post. But's that's probably enough for today. Especially since I' reasonably certain that
hobbitbabe is the only one reading this who has much interest in hockey at all. But yes. Hockey is a bit crazy at the moment (well, always - but still) and people are over-reacting all over the place.
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I was living in Columbus without TV, and a friend who had cable made me come over and watch two new strange things: Don Cherry and Beavis&Butthead. He had the same attitude to both of them, like "Can you believe this? It's funny, but it's awful!"
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-J
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Hockey is a violent sport. And I don't want to change that. It's physical and fast and that's what's good about it. I just don't think it also needs straight up actual violence.
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