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Posted on: 03-24-09 09:32 AM Posted by: DPR4444
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 To fight or not to fight?
http://www.dailyheraldtribune.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1491086
Two unlikely teammates sit across from one another.
It’s an hour before the start of the Oldtimers’ Hockey Challenge at the Canada Games Arena.
Before dressing, ex-NHL players Jimmy Mann and Cliff Ronning take a few minutes to chat about what everyone has an opinion on – fighting in hockey.
Mann is more known for his fists than his hockey skills. He fought his way through 293 NHL games playing for the Winnipeg Jets, the Quebec Nordiques and the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Cliff Ronning, a long-time Vancouver Canuck, was one of the smallest guys in the league and was known for his stickhandling. He skated his way through 1,137 NHL games and had 306 goals and 563 assists.
Both players agreed that fighting has a place in hockey, but for different reasons.
“It’s been part of the game since Day 1,” Mann said Friday, who co-manages the charity hockey tour. “I mean, you know, in our days when we fought, you go in the corner and you get a high stick. The guy turns around, you fight and that’s how it went.”
Mann said the league is wasting too much time trying to cut down on the fights. He said what the NHL needs to do is concentrate on the cheap hits, particularly hits to the head.
“Guys fight a bit, and that’s it,” said Mann, who retired from the NHL in 1988 and played his last season in the International Hockey League in 1989.
“How many guys have you seen fight for a while and they are there the next game? Whereas guys who are at centre ice and getting head shots are knocked out. Those guys are out for months at a time. Maybe look at that a little more and then go back to the fighting.”
In his rookie season with the Jets, Mann spent 287 minutes in the penalty box. He is one of a handful of players who has been criminally charged outside the hockey rink. In 1982, Mann left the bench and suckerpunched Pittsburgh Penguin’s Paul Gardner. Gardner’s jaw was broken in two places. Police fined Mann $500 and the league gave Mann a 10-game suspension. Gardner was out for 21 games.
“Fights aren’t there to be memorable type of things,” said Mann, who as a rookie beat got the better of heavyweights Al Secord and Terry O’Reilly in fights. “They are there to be part of the game. I had the incident with Paul Gardner. I didn’t regret what I did. There were other circumstances around it.”
One of the loudest arguments heard for keeping the fight in hockey is to protect the star players. Ronning said there is a code on the ice. As a smaller player at five feet eight inches tall, weighing 180 pounds, Ronning knew his role and that of his teammates.
“Myself being a small player, I was protected by the players. One of the worst things is a small guy going around sticking guys,” said Ronning, who played his last NHL game in the 2003-2004 season. “I remember Craig Berube said he would protect me but if I start stuff, he’s going to make me finish it.”
Ronning said there is room for fighting but it doesn’t have to be in every shift in every game.
“It’s important to protect certain players,” he said. “A player like Wayne Gretzky, if he didn’t have (Dave) Semenko, no one would have seen his 18-year career.”
Yes, the players are bigger and tougher. But do players like Alex Ovechkin and Sydney Crosby still need protection?
“Sure, Ovechkin can fight, but you want those guys playing hockey,” said Ronning. “It’s important to have guys looking after your star players. If I was an owner, I would make sure I had somebody on the bench in case someone takes liberties with a player.”
Hockey has to stay an aggressive sport and a tough sport, he said.
“That’s what makes it different from a lot of sports,” he said. “At the NHL level, it’s a man’s sport. That’s the way I see it.”
In January, Don Sanderson a 21-year-old player, in the Ontario senior men’s league died from injuries sustained from an on ice fight. Sanderson was fighting an opposing player when his helmet came off. Near the end of the fight, both players fell and Sanderson’s unprotected head hit the ice.
His death re-ignited the longstanding debate to ban fighting outright or to tighten the rules on fighting. At the league’s annual general meeting in early March, the league looked at stiffer penalties to discourage fighting.
One rule proposal mandates an additional two-minute instigator penalty for retaliating after a clean check. Another calls for a 10-minute misconduct for “stage fights” right off the faceoff.
Theo Fleury, also in Grande Prairie for the Oldtimers game, is no stranger to the penalty box. Fleury played 16 seasons in the NHL racking up 1,840 penalty minutes. Fleury played his last NHL season in 2002- 2003. In 2004, he played with the Horse Lake Thunder of the North Peace Hockey League.
“It’s hard to know until it’s actually implemented if it’s going to work or not,” Fleury said, referring to the rule proposals.
“You know, I think if they got rid of the instigator rule it would make more guys accountable on the ice for sure. If they are looking for accountability, it’s a step in the right direction.”
Fighting in hockey changes the momentum of the game. Fleury said, the incident in Ontario was unfortunate.
“Now everybody thinks there needs to be drastic changes to the rules,” said Fleury. “Obviously the guys are bigger, stronger, and faster. I don’t think one incident should make people change something drastically. It’s tragic and unfortunate, your heart goes out to the family. It could happen to anybody. Every time we lace on the skates to go play a game that’s the risk you take.”
So does fighting have a place in hockey?
“Absolutely, it’s like a religion,” said Fleury. “It’s like going to a Catholic church and they stop giving out bread at mass. It’s one of those things that have been there forever and it definitely has a place.”
Gaston Gingras played 247 games in the NHL doing his time with the Montreal Canadians and the Toronto Maple Leafs. Additionally he spent a lot ice time playing in the European hockey leagues.
He has mixed feelings about the proposed stage-fighting rule, which calls for stricter punishment for fights that take place at the drop of the puck.
“It’s discretional from the ref,” said Gingras. “That would be difficult to do. You know what I think the game itself is tremendous so I think they just leave it like that.”
Gingras stopped watching hockey before the 2004-2005 lockout because of all the hooking and holding.
“There was no speed to the game,” he said. “The best player on the ice was able to be countered by a fourth-line player. The game today is so fast, but I think the fighting is part of hockey.”
Gingras said he wasn’t a fighter and he still wouldn’t take it out of the game. If you did, he said, the stickwork would get much worse. This is what he saw in Europe.
“You would see guys retaliate,” said Gingras. “They can’t fight. If there was a conflict between me and you, you drop the gloves and settle it and it’s done.”
Doug Bodger played eight NHL seasons with Buffalo, Pittsburgh and Vancouver before retiring in 2000. The towering defenceman said the Sanderson incident was unfortunate but extremely rare if you consider all the leagues and all the games played every winter.
“It’s very unfortunate incident but it did happened and there have been four million fights previous to that didn’t go wrong,” said Bodger.
“It’s part of the game.”
Bodger said the proposed stage fight misconduct penalty would be useless.
“The guy can spend 10 minutes in the box or 10 minutes on the bench,” said Bodger. “So if they don’t stage a fight, the boss is going to bench them.”
Hockey, he said, used to be a game of frustration. When someone did something you didn’t like you went at each other.
“That’s the way you expressed it.”
In his playing days, Bodger said the new guys had to fight to prove themselves.
“You had to prove you weren’t afraid,” he said. “If you showed you weren’t afraid then they would leave you alone. Before, you were afraid to hit Wayne Gretzky because you were going to be killed by Dave Semenko. Now the instigator rule just defies that.”
Handing out penalties for 23 years in the NHL was referee Ron Hoggarth. Hoggarth had a front-row seat to some of the bloodiest fights in hockey history. In the 1970s, Hoggarth used to make sense out of the Broadstreet Bullies games at the Spectrum in Philadelphia.
“I don’t think they’ll ever get rid of fighting,” said Hoggarth. “I think they are moving in the right direction for the staged fights.”
He has never been a fan of the fights.
“Even with the Broad Street Bullies when I had them, I really didn’t like them,” he said. “I thought it was disgraceful for our linesmen to be rolling around. My biggest fear right now is the players are so big. I am afraid someone is going to get seriously hurt.”
In his career, Hoggarth officiated 1,173 regular season games and 139 Stanley Cup playoff games.
“It’s a game not of violence but one on the edge of violence,” said Hoggarth. “That’s what hockey is all about.”
He said the NHL is selling an entertainment product and fighting is a part of it.
“I think they have to take the nonsense out and I think they are moving in the right direction.”
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Posted on: 03-16-09 07:43 PM Posted by: Cane
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http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090314 /OPINION03/903140...
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Jerry Green
Fighting is a foundation of hockey
This winter marks the 50th anniversary of the Golden Era of hockey, when most hockey players performed bareheaded, without their front teeth, often with fists. Back in 1959, the team dentist was as vital as a top goalkeeper.
A half-century later, the NHL is trying to go prim and proper by watering down one of the sport's main events -- fighting. The league's general managers, meeting this past week, discussed contaminating the sport with harsher penalties. As it was put, to diminish "goonery."
In what I reckon to be an irony, the Golden Era aspect was forwarded to me in a leaflet from the Detroit Red Wings Alumni Association, a fraternity of good fellows reeking with nostalgia and united in performing good deeds.
The membership includes the renowned Ted Lindsay, Nick Libett, Gordie Howe -- all craggy gentlemen -- and such later-day performers as Joe Kocur, Bob Probert and Dennis Hextall.
Prim and proper, indeed. More accurately, all fists and elbows!
Feeling punchy
My introduction to hockey in Detroit occurred some 55 years ago, a night when Lindsay took on most of the Maple Leafs. He beat the considerably larger Jim Thomson into a bloody mess -- to the agitation of Toronto coach King Clancy, himself a noted pugilist as a player. Lindsay and Clancy almost tangled by the bench, over the boards.
Also near the end of the game, a spectator near me berated the Wings' Glen Skov. This didn't sit well with Terry Sawchuk, the Wings' Hall of Fame goaltender. So Sawchuk attempted to reach the critic by scaling the wire mesh protective barrier -- in full goalie regalia.
Sawchuk's corrugated leg pads became impaled on the wire. So Lindsay took up the battle for his trapped teammate.
"Go ahead and shoot off your (naughty-word) mouth," Lindsay shouted at the fan. He trod along the wooden rinkside seats in his skates, then beat some guy into a bloody pulp. As I recall, it was the wrong guy, but I had been indoctrinated into the intensity of Detroit hockey.
Fight on
It has been my notion throughout this past half-century and a bit longer that hockey players have qualities superior to their spoiled counterparts in other professional sports. They are more friendly, more humble, more accessible and less egotistical. They are also tougher -- and rougher. And braver.
Hockey is a sport of collisions and banging and thrusting and speed. But the NHL seems forever intent on reducing its appeal.
Dropping the sticks, baring the knuckles and engaging in fistic mayhem has been an ingredient in hockey for more than a century, starting well before the Golden Era. In addition, fights make for some of the best anecdotes and videos in all of sports.
"Well, fighting was part of the game," Lindsay told the late Joe Falls and me for a book we planned a few years ago (never published). "In our time we were playing teams 14 times a season -- seven in each city. A lot of time to build up animosities. Every game was a war because it was so personal. If you got into it with somebody it would carry over to the next game and the next game. If you didn't get a guy one night, you'd get him next night -- or the next week or next month."
Such as Lindsay's fistic feud with the Canadiens' Dickie Moore.
Back then, just before the start of the Golden Era, the Wings typically played in Montreal on Saturday nights. The teams hustled to the train station after the game, traveling to Detroit in time to play each other again Sunday night. They rode in two separate sleepers -- except to get to the dining car, one team had to walk through another team's sleeper. It was an explosive situation.
"Once in London, we all got out, and walked along the tracks so that we wouldn't go through their car," Howe said. "Another time one of our guys got into a fight with Dickie Moore just as he was walking to breakfast.
"After that, they put the dining car between us."
The legend is Moore's opponent on the train was Lindsay.
Leave it in the rink
Howe and Lindsay were gentleman away from the rink -- but awesome fighters on the ice. And there was no shortage of challengers. One night at Madison Square Garden, Howe was assaulted by Lou Fontinato, the Rangers' toughest fighter. Quickly, Howe pummeled the bejabbers out of Fontinato, finishing the fight with an uppercut. There was a graphic photograph of a bloody Fontinato, his nose broken and bent out of shape.
Rangers' goalie Gump Worsley was the closest witness.
"I heard, thump, thump, thump," Worsley told me. "But it might have been different if Louie hadn't stepped on his stick."
Perhaps.
The Black Hawks (it was two words then) had Keith Magnusson, a redheaded defenseman who fancied himself as an enforcer. So he took boxing lessons.
Magnusson, in order to display his boxing skills during a game, challenged Libett, a friendly, young Red Wing.
I doubt if Libett ever had a boxing lesson. But he didn't need lessons.
He cleaned up on Magnusson in a lopsided bout.
Now fighting is again under attack. But a GM faction's desire to tone down "goonery" could tarnish the Golden Era of hockey.
Jerry Green is a retired Detroit News sportswriter. You can read his Web-exclusive column every Sunday at detnews.com.
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Posted on: 03-13-09 09:23 AM Posted by: captainrick
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http://www.philly.com/dailynews/sports/2009 0313_Flyers__Cote_stages_ verbal_...
By ED MORAN
Philadelphia Daily News
morane@phillynews.com
As far as Riley Cote is concerned, the NHL is going too far in trying to legislate rules to control fighting. He believes if the league follows the general managers' recommendation to give misconduct penalties for staged fighting, the players will find a way around it.
Staged fights are those that begin immediately after faceoffs and are agreed to by both combatants before the drop of the puck. At the conclusion of their Florida meetings this week, the general managers voted to forward a new rule for approval this summer by the competition committee that will result in 10-minute misconduct penalties for staged fighting.
But that, argues the Flyers' pugilist, will only change the way fights begin, and nothing else.
"So, if they have this staged-fighting rule, what you're going to do is line up to the guy, you're going to push him," Cote said. "You're going to be like, 'All right, you push me, I'll push you back, you slash me, I'll slash you back, then we'll make it look like a hockey play.' That's what it's going to amount to.
"Instead of dropping the gloves here, we'll skate over there, push each other a little bit and then that won't be a staged fight because that's part of hockey."
The proposed rule change follows a seasonlong debate about the place of fighting in hockey and the increased chance for injury due to the fact that NHL fighters are bigger, stronger and better trained for what they do than ever before.
The debate heightened after several serious fighting injuries this year and the death of Ontario native Don Sanderson, whose head struck the ice during a fight in an amateur league.
Hockey-fighting proponents argue that the death was a rare occurrence and that most fights result in minor injury, if any. Furthermore, they say that fighting has long been part of the game and a way to keep star players from getting hurt by bigger, lesser-skilled players.
The NHL said that of the first 500 fights this season, 108 of them, or 21.6 percent, began at faceoffs, which they determined were "staged fights."
Cote said this is only the result of earlier league rules to deal with fighting, particularly the instigator rule that gives an extra 2-minute penalty to a player who is determined to have started a fight without provocation.
"The whole staged-fighting thing has evolved because of the instigator rule," Cote said. "You put that into play and guys are worried about putting their teams down all the time.
"Well, now it's more of a mutual agreement. You're down two goals, you want to get a momentum boost so you stir it up. You push the guy, you get a fight. But it's not as easy as it looks sometimes to get a big bodycheck and get somebody to come after you.
"Like [Tuesday night against Buffalo], we were down a goal so I slashed [Patrick Kaleta]. I was pretty sure he wasn't going to fight me, but I wanted to make it known, 'If you're going to run around, I'm going to fight you.'
"If a tough guy runs one of our guys and I'm not out there exactly at that time to deal with it, well, my next shift I'm going to go out there and try and deal with it. So from the outside looking in, it looks like a staged fight, but it's not.
"It's more so just working around the rules that they put into place. I don't want to get a 2-, 5- and 10-[minute penalty]. I don't care about the 10, I'll take the 10, but the extra 2 could be the difference-maker in a hockey game and I don't want to put my team down by a selfish act.
"That's why staged fighting is happening. You get 5 minutes each. Both go to the penalty box, you both prove a point. I think everyone is just overreacting." *
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Posted on: 03-12-09 03:11 PM Posted by: allberts
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From the Caps blog
Brashear on Fighting: Don't Change a Thing
Here's the latest must-read from our good friend Slava Malamud of Sport Express:
The curtailing of the NHL fighting culture proposed by the general managers this week is making news in Russia, too. Sport-Express is running a big story on it in tomorrow's edition, which includes my interview with Caps enforcer Donald Brashear. The interview was done several weeks ago in anticipation of the league's upcoming measures, and, as one might have expected, Brash was not too hot on the idea of tampering with this aspect of the game.
"Accidents happen," Brashear said, "and every time they happen they want to take fighting out of hockey. It is only fighting that they want to eliminate, and it is only in the United States [where you hear it]. Probably, people here take their family values seriously and don't want to expose their kids to violence. They probably should explain to their children that violence in the game is one thing and violence away from the game is another. We in Canada love our families too, but we also like fighting in hockey. People [in Canada] don't kill each other more often because of this."
Brashear, however, seemed to share the GMs' dislike of staged fights.
"The staged fight, one without any reasons for it, is really just violence," Brashear said. "It often happens that someone wants to challenge me but if I don't see any reason to fight him, I won't accept. And that's how it probably should be. But when someone is out there trying to hit as many people as he can in a shift to heat things up, his opponents will send a guy out to get him. That is normal... I would recommend to leave everything as it is. Let the guys do their job. It's always been like this. It's not like someone is trying to poke an opponent with a stick in the throat or intentionally hurt anyone. A fight is a part of the game."
Brashear also remembered that his most painful memory from his fighting days was a knockdown suffered at the hands of Chris Simon in the minors. (The interview, once again, was taken well before the Wade Belak fight in Nashville.) When I mentioned that Simon is currenlty playing in the KHL and seems to enjoy it, Donald expressed a lot of interest and asked me to tell him more about the Russian league. As his contract is up at the end of this year, he wants to consider this option too and, to tell you the truth, it is not so bad an option.
As a matter of fact, currently there are serious talks in the KHL with regard fighting too. Except the Russians are going in the opposite direction: they want to lessen the penalties and make fighting more prevalent. Currently in the KHL, as in the rest of Europe, both fighters recveive an automatic game misconduct. Which doesn't stop the likes of Simon from practicing their trade from time to time. A proposal is out there right now to make fighting punishable with a ten-minute misconduct instead. Which, of course, will still keep it a riskier business than in the NHL. However, there are some things that can make Russia a better option for Brashear, Georges Laraque and other members of the NHL's endangered species.
The KHL's long-term goal is to become a major competitor for the NHL, in talent, in the quality of play and in the overall business viability. However, one thing that won't happen in a hurry over in the Mother Country is parity. In Russian hockey, as in most European sports leagues, there are perennial haves and perennial have-nots. Some teams, like Vityaz Chekhov (where Simon plays) for example, have no designs on capturing the Gagarin Cup at any time in the forseeable future. But they play in a small blue-collar town and one way of attracting fans to their games is brawling. Vityaz's head coach Mike Krushelnyski, though himself not a PIM leader in his NHL days, welcomes this North American aspect of the game. As does Traktor Chelyabink's head coach Andrei "Dirty Naz" Nazarov, the only Russian enforcer in NHL history. Regular season battles between Traktor and Vityaz this year were as big a fan and media attraction as some of the games between marquee clubs.
So, there are teams in Russia willing to pay top dollar to North American enforcers, especially if they can also play some hockey. Which Brash still can, by the way. Consider also that in Russia they will actually be able to keep most of that top dollar for themselves, thanks to the 13% flat tax, and that they will have to work much less for it, thanks to the shorter season. And somewhere like Chekhov someone like Brashear can actually be a demi-god to the locals and enjoy front-page exposure in the national press.
What's not to like? I can tell you that Donald clearly looked very interested.
I don't think anyone has ever thought they'd see the day when a Russian league would out-brawl the NHL. It may be coming. |
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Posted on: 03-03-09 11:47 AM Posted by: DPR4444
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http://www.thehockeynews.com/articles/23864-The-St raight-Edge-Eagar-to-shed ...
Ben Eager is an enforcer who thinks he’s a power forward. Or maybe we’ve got it twisted – maybe Ben Eager is a power forward who people think is an enforcer.
Either way, the kid puts up numbers and this year he’s been an important element to the rising Chicago Blackhawks.
Eager has already eclipsed his NHL season-best for goals and points, scoring 10 times and adding four assists through 55 games. And though that may not seem like a lot of offense, the left winger is also the Hawks’ nuclear option when an opponent zeroes in on one of Chicago’s stars, such as Patrick Kane or Jonathan Toews.
“I don’t really consider myself an enforcer,” said the 6-foot-2, 220-pound Eager. “I just play the game hard, play a physical role. We’ve got a lot of skilled players and if guys take liberties with them, you have to stand up for your teammates.”
And though Eager has no problem dropping the gloves – he’s done so at least eight times this season against tough competition such as Cam Janssen and Zack Stortini – the gritty Ottawa native would much rather be appreciated for the full scope of his game.
In junior, Eager could put points on the board and even finished second on his team, the Ontario League’s Oshawa Generals, in scoring in ’03-04 with 25 goals and 52 points – along with the requisite 204 PIMs.
A first round draft pick of the Phoenix Coyotes (23rd overall) in 2002, Eager was traded to Philadelphia in 2004 alongside Sean Burke and Branko Radivojevic in a deal that saw Mike Comrie go the other way. In his Flyers career, Eager bounced between Broad Street and the American League’s Phantoms, where his use was largely restricted to fighting. In fact, he led the NHL in penalty minutes in ’06-07, despite playing in just 63 games.
“Coming up as a young guy, you do whatever it takes,” he recalled.
Last season, one that saw him traded from Philly to Chi-Town, Eager averaged just less than six minutes of ice time per game.
“I had a long year last year,” Eager said. “It was frustrating. I didn’t want to go through that again.”
So he worked hard in the off-season and is now playing more minutes – nearly nine per game – on a line with Colin Fraser and Adam Burish. Eager is having fun coming to the rink everyday and has found more confidence in himself. But really, he is just rediscovering his past.
My talk with Eager came at a rather coincidental time. Players who can fight often get pigeonholed into that role, usually to their detriment in the long-term. Then you see Eager hit double-digits in goals or watch Anaheim’s George Parros roof a sick breakaway wrister against Toronto early in the season and remember that these players were elite before they became enforcers.
Friday night, on CBC’s The Fifth Estate, reporter Bob McKeown looks into the fight debate in hockey. I watched a sneak preview of the show Thursday and it certainly raises all the issues on the matter in an emotional and visceral way. Also, if you ever wanted to see a poignant Nick Kypreos, the interview with the ex-enforcer-turned-talkin g-head provides some of the more raw and real moments of the piece.
After watching the show, I played devil’s advocate to my wife on the fighting issue, much in the same way I do in the THN office from time to time. There are a lot of good arguments against fighting in hockey, but I still know the NHL and the NHL Players’ Association tacitly endorse fisticuffs by not banning them and I still like to watch a good throw-down.
Boston’s Milan Lucic may be the perfect metaphor for my stance on the issue: The ‘Looch’ can score and deliver big, beautiful hits. The home crowd gets out of their seats for both. But they also rise and go full-throat when he drops the gloves; it’s a part of his game, but not the only thing he does.
Same goes for the sport itself. You can take fighting out, but it was a part – not the only reason – of why I fell in love with the game in the first place. Hockey didn’t choose me to watch it; I chose hockey.
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