Yeah I am officially done with fighting in the NHL

[Forty_Sixand2]

Welcome back sly.

 

[forty_three]

What about a marginal player trying to make an impression on his coach? Or gain popularity with fans in hopes it will keep him from being sent back to the minors.

If rules against fighting keep stiffs from ever making the NHL to begin with it's all to the good, IMO.

Most so-called "enforcers" are crap at the actual game. I've watched enough hockey to know that despite the lack of statistical evidence.

This is the problem that needs to be addressed. As I said, take away the worthless hack and if a fight breaks out in the passion of the game, so be it. But guys like Parros, Orr, Boll, Prust... they are completely useless.

But they are not the worst thing in the league.

But checking is not against the rules in the first place. Wearing skates is not against the rules in the first place. Accidentally putting a shot up in the stands is not against the rules in the first place. That seems like a fundamental difference. Your examples are otherwise legal plays with bad results, whereas fighting is always penalized.

Yes, only certain hits are against the rules. And certain actions with your skate are against the rules. And shooting the puck out is almost always against the rules.

And to go on the flip side, how many hip checks result in injury vs how many fights directly do?

I just don't see how any of the arguments for fighting stand up anymore.

1) Self-policing? Right. Because the cheapshot artists of the NHL are worried about having to fight later? They just turtle, let their goon deal with the consequences, and cheapshot another day. And anyway, now we see fights after every big hit, clear or dirty, so it's not like these guys can make a good judgement as to what needs to be policed.

^^ There is is right there. Marchand, Cooke, Clusterfuck, Avery don't have to answer for their actions. Take away "fighting" and they never will. Make the "Goon" obsolete and...

Enforcers used to protect stars. Now they fight the battles gutless little pussies refuse to.

If you are saying that taking fighting out of the game is for the players safety and well being in life, then why are you not in favor of taking hitting out of the game as well?

This is the part of the argument I don't understand. It's only over fights that the arguments get hyperbolic.

Imagine that Orr was skating next to Parros and tied up his arms and threw him face first into the ice by the collar, the actual event that caused Parros' injury. There wouldn't be anywhere near as much discussion. But there is because it was a "useless fight" that led to the injury.

I, on the other hand think Orr could be suspended five games for dangerous play and Parros should get a couple for staging the fight to begin with. Dumbass got what he deserved. As harsh as it is, he did.

Being a Red Wing fan, I didn't know hitting and fighting were still allowed in today's NHL.

Because they have the talent and team play to make goon teams look bad in every aspect of the game. I'd LOVE more teams to play that way. I hope it gets there. But I guarantee you if Matt Cooke corkscrews Datsyuk (if he could catch him) SOMEONE would finish Cooke off.

I guess the big anti-fighting argument a lot of us have is that it unnecessarily puts players at extra risk.

We just want something which is already illegal to carry heftier consequences to make it less common to the point of being a rare event.

*ding* *ding*. A fight, organically in heat of a game is just fine. Two idiots lining up on a faceoff five minutes after a star got hit... not so much. If you stage it per a WWE script, I am fine with them sending you off. And the coach who sent you out there.

IDK out of all the goons I like the agitators the best. The agitators give the Doobster a case of teh lulz at times

Agitators are the problem. Goons are the unfortunate side effect. An agitator is infinitely more dangerous than a goon because goons only hurt themselves and each other. Agitators hurt whoever they can.

I'm not gonna go out and argue that fighting needs to be taken out of the game because these are grown men making their own choices. That being said fighting in hockey is pretty pointless.

What it's evolved into is certainly pointless.


If I was Shanny, here's what I'd do.
Orr - Five games for suplexing Parros
Parros - 2 games, one for an unnecessary fight, and one because it's a re-hash of a previous fight when both played for other teams.
The two guys who took of their helmets. 2 each for dropping the lids and one more for the Leaf for fighting a guy who delivered a clean hit.

 

[Darkstone42]

LET ?EM GO! ? Fighting Belongs in the NHL | Pro Sports News Nation





NY Rangers toughman Brandon Prust believes fighting belongs in NHL - NY Daily News

The first article provides evidence contrary to its point. 8-10% of concussions come from fights? That's negligible? No, that's not negligible, that's a decent chunk. 8-10% of concussions are produced by something which, on average, occurs what, once every other game? Those numbers prove the connection between fighting and CTE.

 

[dash]

While I think this is a worthy debate, I think Bob McKenzie hit it right on the nose last night when he said that until the players, coaches, and owners really move to a position of eliminating fighting for the league, it's likely going to remain status quo as far as the NHL is concerned. The league has taken small steps with some of their rule changes to discourage fighting and the OHL is clamping down on the "repeat fighter" with suspensions once you've been in a designated number of fights. What I do know is that guys are definitely bigger and stronger than they were 30 years ago and they certainly can inflict more damage.

 

[SLY]

Welcome back sly.

Thank you sir. How goes it?

 

[TiLoBrown]

David Clarkson was once considered a goon. Didn't Matt Cooke win most improved a couple years back? Saying "throw out the goons and the fighters" isn't going to improve the game, it may actually hurt the players you want gone

 

[Forty_Sixand2]

Thank you sir. How goes it?

Not bad. Emailed you a while back but not sure inhad the right address. I hope all is well.

 

[Nasty_Magician]

To me a goon is somebody that is noticeably out of place. Guys like Clarkson and Cooke can actually skate and contribute don't fall under that umbrella. Guys like Cam Janssen who are nothing but a liability to their team when they're not fighting I can live without.

 

[TiLoBrown]

I can't even say that about Cam because he's given us goals before. Brach however falls under the goon umbrella you describe

 

[IndyAndy]

David Clarkson was once considered a goon. Didn't Matt Cooke win most improved a couple years back? Saying "throw out the goons and the fighters" isn't going to improve the game, it may actually hurt the players you want gone

Not sure that I'm understanding your point here.

 

[jstewismybastardson]

David Clarkson was once considered a goon. Didn't Matt Cooke win most improved a couple years back? Saying "throw out the goons and the fighters" isn't going to improve the game, it may actually hurt the players you want gone

To me a goon is somebody that is noticeably out of place. Guys like Clarkson and Cooke can actually skate and contribute don't fall under that umbrella. Guys like Cam Janssen who are nothing but a liability to their team when they're not fighting I can live without.

this was originally written in the summer of 2011 after the fighters died

he tries to define/quantify the "job title" of goon ... i dont think Clarkson would have ever been considered a goon in this definition

Looking through the numbers though, I came across something interesting. The pure goon, a player like Steve MacIntyre, didn’t really exist prior to 1980. I defined a pure goon season as being one in which a player produces no more than one point per twenty games, plays at least twenty games and averages at least two PIM per game. I limited my analysis to forwards, for obvious reasons. This produced a list of 101 players, with names like you’d expect: MacIntyre, Colton Orr, Cam Janssen, Andrew Peters, Darcy Hordichuk (a guy I was criticized for not mentioning as a reason for optimism for the Oilers…get over it…get over it), Riley Cote…real cementheads,

Amazingly to me, of the 101 player-seasons on my list (guys like Janssen and Peters show up repeatedly), exactly none of them occurred before 1980-81 and only ten of them prior to 1990-91. This baffled me, so I went back and ran the search again, changing the parameters to include forwards with at least a point every ten games, twenty games played and two PIM per game during the 1970s. This produced one more name, a fellow by the name of Dave Hoyda, who scored 1-3-4 for (of course) Philadelphia in 41 games in 1977-78 while accumulating 119 PIM. It seems that, prior to 1980, if you wanted to be an NHL hockey player, you couldn’t be one just because you could fight. Guys like Dave Schultz and Tiger Williams could put a few points on the board as well.

NHL rosters expanded to 18 skaters for 1982-83, which probably played a role in driving some of this. There’s an important point here, I think. First of all, full disclosure: although I don’t think that the evidence conclusively establishes that there’s a connection between fighting and all of the awful stuff that happens to some fighters, I put very little value on fighting as a hockey skill or an integral part of a hockey game. As such, were I the guy making decisions, the evidentiary burden on those who’d like to see it banned would be pretty low. It’s like if there was a study that suggested that eating bark off trees was bad for you, but it wasn’t a great study – eating bark off trees isn’t a particularly high value activity so the sensible thing would be to refrain.

The important point though is that when the old farts go on about fighting being an integral part of the game, guys like Steve MacIntyre actually aren’t in the tradition of hockey up until 1980 and even then only barely. They’ve only really become a part of the game in the 1990s and 2000s. You cannot support an argument for their continued existence in the game on the basis of history.

I’ve mused before that rosters are too big in the NHL. We see coaches trying to kill games with fourth lines, sending them out to ensure that nothing happens for 40 seconds before scooting back to the bench. The existence of the pure goon is, I think, another piece of evidence in support of that view. Coaches have determined that the 18th roster spot is of such little value that you can safely fill it with a guy who can’t skate. Coaches didn’t used to think that. The expansion in rosters is the obvious reason that they do now.

 

[BOSSMANPC]

It's like Jim H. said. Teams are getting fighters so the other teams get fighter we end up with players like John Scott on the rosters it's getting like the 70's again. I'm not totally against it but agree with Matty that to many are staged and it's not two guy's going at it because they are pissed at each other.

Look what it did to this game, they cheered during the fight the guy stays down and it sounds like a funeral home and there is no flow to the game anymore. Two players got hurt in those fights and it's only the first game of the year. never heard this arena so quiet and they have been playing for five minutes since the fight. Great entertainment.

Yep I quoted myself. I have no problem with legit fights. What I HATE is a guy throws a good clean check and needs to answer to a goon for it. We say we love the game because it's fast and tough.........bullshit, it's tough as long as you don't throw a legal check and hurt the feelings of one of our star players. That's not a tough sport ! Can you imagine if a fight broke out in the NFL every time a "star" QB got sacked? It's part of the game and if the pussy stars can't handle it then go play fucking tennis. Then we lose the goons.

One guy gets his stick up on another and they agree to drop them, fine. Go at it. Looking over your shoulder because you threw a clean legal check because some cement head is gunning for you to me is making it a pussy game.

JMO

 

[dash]

It's part of the game and if the pussy stars can't handle it then go play fucking tennis.

I like tennis

 

[jstewismybastardson]

I like tennis

HA HA DASH ... TENNIS IS FOR PUSSIES AND QUEERS!!! (say the tough guys)

 

[forty_three]

To me a goon is somebody that is noticeably out of place. Guys like Clarkson and Cooke can actually skate and contribute don't fall under that umbrella. Guys like Cam Janssen who are nothing but a liability to their team when they're not fighting I can live without.

They aren't goons, they are agitators and cheap shot artists. And guys like that are the reason we have goons, and they are the reason the line between a clean check and a dirty one is so blurred.

I think those guys are worse for the league that straight out fighters. If we could count on the league to consistently punish random dangerous play and force guys like them to actually play and not get buy just trying to get a rise out of someone, the game as a whole is far better off.

 

[esls79]

I grew up on Norris division hockey in the 80's, so you can probably guess my stance on fighting.

With that being said, I wish there was a mandatory minimum game misconduct for dropping the gloves - at the refs discression. If the fight appeared to be in retaliation for a dirty play or cheap shot the ref actuially sees, then he can at his discretion make an exception to the rule. This way, only situations that truly warrant a fight will produce a fight.

 

[IndyAndy]

One guy gets his stick up on another and they agree to drop them, fine. Go at it. Looking over your shoulder because you threw a clean legal check because some cement head is gunning for you to me is making it a pussy game.

Agreed.

...I wish there was a mandatory minimum game misconduct for dropping the gloves - at the refs discression. If the fight appeared to be in retaliation for a dirty play or cheap shot the ref actuially sees, then he can at his discretion make an exception to the rule. This way, only situations that truly warrant a fight will produce a fight.

I would be okay with a rule like this.

 

[Nasty_Magician]

They aren't goons, they are agitators and cheap shot artists. And guys like that are the reason we have goons, and they are the reason the line between a clean check and a dirty one is so blurred.

I think those guys are worse for the league that straight out fighters. If we could count on the league to consistently punish random dangerous play and force guys like them to actually play and not get buy just trying to get a rise out of someone, the game as a whole is far better off.

Meh, Clarkson isn't really a cheap shot artist. For the record I'm not entirely against fighting. However, goons and staged fights I can live without. Clarkson was always more of a reactionary fighter. He answered the call when it came. I have no beef with that.

 

[Nasty_Magician]

My point is, hey this guy took a cheap shot at our guy, send out the enforcer to take care of him. If that guy is a middleweight though, odds are he won't wind up fighting the heavyweight enforcer. The other heavyweight enforcer will step in and then you just have 2 goons going at it which solves nothing. No lesson learned, nothing accomplished.

 

[pixburgher66]

Accidents happen, but the goal of the league and sports medicine professionals is to limit risk. Fighting increases the risk of injury to a level where it's not beneficial. If the goal of the league is protect players, then it's a no-brainer (poor terminology). They can't take themselves seriously by creating these means of protecting their players and allowing fighting to continue in such a meaningless manner. Fightless hockey exists at other levels, and it's damn entertaining.