Collier: NHL fights should be KO'd
Share with others:
Demonstrating again his stranglehold on the obvious, National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman said the other night in Tampa that he will not be engaging Penguins owner Mario Lemieux in any further debate on the fighting issue or the discipline issue.
Really.
Lemieux is more likely to frequent a karaoke bar than debate anything publicly. He said his piece to the relevant factotums, and that is that.
But that doesn't mean the NHL can plan on a long-term future in which fighting maintains its dubious status as one of the game's essential entertainment elements. Cooler heads with bigger brains eventually will rid the league of its fistic profile, and don't be surprised if that political effort isn't led by the Penguins.
For the moment, however, we're again in this rhetorical hockey ditch where people are trying to explain why such things as assault and battery are somehow impossible to disentangle from the game's heavy historical fabric.
Trouble is, we're really overcomplicating it.
Just as a matter of taste, in the interest of full disclosure, I've always been generally OK with situations where players are battling for the puck, become frustrated, and sometimes fail to control the competitive instinct to lash out, especially in a league where the fist is an honored tool. When on-ice officials arrive at this kind of scene and immediately try to separate the combatants, if a punch or two lands, I can attribute that to the game's great passion.
But that's not the answer to why fighting exists.
The answer to that is, because the NHL wants it to exist.
Otherwise, you would not see two players squared off, their gloves on the ice, and not three but now four officials standing around waiting for some mysteriously prescribed number of permissible punches to land.
Could you maybe step between these guys?
Some nights, I think they're waiting for a ring card girl.
In the HBO series 24/7, the exquisite four-episode look at the Penguins, the Washington Capitals, and the Winter Classic, part of the early game footage shows a fight involving Penguins forward Arron Asham. As Asham comes out of the corner to engage his opponent, the referee actually moves the net from its moorings and instructs the other players in the vicinity to give the assailants room.
That is the National Hockey League, in the person of the official, clearing ice for boxing. Not figuratively, literally. If the league didn't want fighting, how could that happen?
First Published February 20, 2011 12:00 am
