Tough and physical play has always been a great leveler, irrespective of the sport. While it doesn’t abrogate skill or finesse as factors separating victory from defeat, controlled and systemic physicality elevates competition from a mental and physical perspective.
Enshrining violence within the rules however, as it is in hockey, simply encourages a destructive spiral that reduces the game from its true form. Violence escalates from an aggressive mindset to a mindset of aggression, and we as fans are simply treated to a spectacle of barbarism that undermines the true qualities of the game. Simply put, it’s a waste of time, it’s dangerous and we should get rid of it.
An article in The Peak two weeks ago addressed fighting in hockey, advocating its continuance and importance to the game’s fidelity as a deterrent to ‘illegal’ violence. Let’s disregard this NRA-esque ‘fight guns with more guns’ mentality momentarily and talk about the game.
Hockey is unique in that the boundaries of acceptable physicality are extremely relaxed — it is often unclear exactly where the line lands. As a player stepping onto the ice, it’s impossible given the NHL’s case-by-case subjectivity to know what constitutes acceptable versus unacceptable; this is a massive failure on the part of the league to draw bright-lines.
Coming from a Canucks fan, it’s easy to write off the following as sour grapes, but the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals was the worst officiated series I’d ever watched. It was impossible to tell what a foul was and what wasn’t — the officials themselves appeared unsure as to when to blow their whistles. The most surreal moment of indecisiveness was the ejection of Aaron Rome (never before labeled as a “dirty player”) in Game 3.
The lasting memory for me was the zebra leading him to the penalty box, before realizing Nathan Horton was seriously injured. The official then promptly sent Rome to the dressing room and issued a ten minute major and game misconduct. I blew a gasket – why did he change his mind? What elevated the offense to that extreme?
This is the NHL’s idiocy: the intent to injure is irrelevant to the degree of discipline. Instead, the injury resulting from the action is the dominating factor. Aaron Rome copped a four game suspension in those finals for a borderline late hit while Brad Marchand rained punches with no repercussions as no injury resulted.
This inconsistency is why goonism and fighting thrives in the NHL. That reckless and dangerous hits may be ignored if the victim is fortunate enough to get up and skate away simply feeds into a mindset of violence and aggression and demands that players take the proverbial law into their own literal hands.
But fighting demeans the sport. Hockey can still be the physical and violent game for which purists salivate, but fighting is bush league tomfoolery that adds nothing substantive. In the moment fights may excite and raise energy levels, but so do goals, big (and legal) hits, and stunning saves.
The international game, for instance, bans fighting and uses much stricter officiating standards, and often produces thrilling, memorable hockey games such as the 2010 Olympic gold medal game. The thrill of sport, pure and unadulterated, is what I as a paying fan, want to see. I can pay five dollars for a beer league game to watch halfwit self-proclaimed ‘enforcers’ chase each other around the ice to throw punches.
