NHL allows for fighting in hockey; however it is clearly against the stated rules of the game. Fighting in public is against the law in Massachusetts.
So why does Martha Coakley allow it to occur? While fighting in hockey has gone on for year; that alone does not make it right. There will always be people that argue for bad behavior based on history.
Fighting sets a horrible example for our youth; boys and girls. It glorifies the worst part of a great game. It encourages violent behavior in youth hockey. It puts players in harm’s way. Seemingly the only beneficiaries of public fights on the ice are the NHL owners and TV Networks.
It is time for Martha Coakley to take a stand and bring charges against the next public fight at Boston Garden.
Please share widely!
It is worse than Soccer on skates. Hockey is just plain horrible.
As a former hockey player, I disagree with Mike Cote that it’s boring, and I disagree with the main post that fighting in hockey should be treated as a criminal matter. I don’t like hockey because of the fighting by any means, but hockey fights are a generally effective form of self-policing that serves as a deterrent to dirty hits on the ice. I truly believe hockey would be more dangerous without it.
Hockey is not like football. It’s much faster and it’s played continuously, not in set plays, with players often at opposite ends of the rink. There are fewer officials. This adds up to more potential for dirty hits, the kind that cause concussions. The fights themselves, because it’s hard to box on skates, rarely generate truly serious punches. Generally they involve a couple of weak glancing blows before the players fall and roll around on the ice. Nonetheless, dirty players are hesitant to tangle with the other’s team’s enforcers.
IMO the politics of this would be awful. I most heartily disagree with Bob’s assessment that “it would alienate a small fraction of the electorate.” It would, in my opinion, alienate a pretty large fraction of the electorate and make the AG a laughingstock. Particularly this AG. It would go right up there with the Schilling gaffe and the antipathy to shaking hands outside the Winter Classic. Stuff like this is why liberals have so much trouble with some demographics.
but seriously, it is just so Wicked boring.
son goût.
Yeah, I have gout, so what of it!
you’re getting “pig” from?
LeBeau called the Nazis that all the time on Hogan’s Heroes.
is pig. Chacun is “each man”
does not mean I know the language. My father was raised with French as as primary language and English as a 2nd language, and he choose not to speak French at home because of the discrimination that he and my Aunts and Uncles suffered.
My eldest wanted to go out for the HS football team last year. I started doing research on concussions and hits and such. Ultimately, i decided that he was not going to play football.
In all my research and study and looking into the issue I repeatedly came across some variation of the phrase “for all the problems with football, hockey is worse.” The players in hockey are constantly accelerating and decelerating and when they do get hit, even a legitimate hit, the forces involved are stronger.
In a, perhaps, counter-intuitive way I think the introduction of “better” safety equipment, specifically helmets, have changed the game and not for the better. When I was a kid I watched a lot of hockey. My uncle had (might still have) Bruins season tickets and we would go to many many games a season. Nobody but the goalie wore helmets. I think this made people a little more cautious. Hard hits directly against the boards were much more rare. Hip-checks and shoulder play away from the boards were an art-form that are, I think, lost from the game. Fights were rarer but more definitive: once you shed your gloves you had a real chance of using your bare knuckles to inflict a real injury on somebody who wasn’t protected by a helmet. Nowadays, as fenway points out, the blows are weaker, and with helmets and the body pads on, are ultimately not that effective. Nowadays most of the hits are just squashes against the boards and the really good skaters have lost either the ability or the will to check at center ice. I still recall watching Johnny Bucyk turn people completely upside down and skate away with the puck very cleanly, all this done no where near the boards…. Yeah, he hit them, but in a really weird way it was ‘gentle’: that is to say, he used no more force or aggression than was necessary but still sent people flying. A treat to see. I haven’t seen that kind of hockey in many years.
I think with helmets and all the high tech pads, overall, players skate with more abandon and less skill.
that the Bruins don’t seem to be having any trouble winning over fans. Those of us who love hockey, though, WANT it to be “the poor stepchild of big league sports.”
Frankly, I liked it much better when I was a kid and the sport was limited to Canada and cold parts of the US like New England. I liked that there were teams in places like Hartford and Quebec City instead of Dallas and Miami and LA. I liked that there was a hard core of fans who knew their stuff and enjoyed being in on something others were missing. I liked that you could get to know the players as fairly regular guys. Even today hockey players are far more accessible and less a**holish than players in the other three big league sports. Every step away from that, toward more money in the game and more vapid ESPN coverage, is something to lament in my book.
The difference? Fighting, in large part. Brawls are not what the vast majority of contemporary Americans want to see. Just look at the collapse of prize fighting over the past 100 years: from major leagues to PPV. The NFL and NBA have just as many opportunities for dirty hits but don’t allow interruptions of play multiple times a game for slug-outs. Result: the NHL is an also-ran. Revenue in billions: NFL $11.0 6, MLB $7.0, NBA $5.0, NHL $3.3. That may be where some fans, like you, want it, but the owners are leaving billions of dollars on the table.
There is no way in h.e.double-hockey-sticks that fighting has anything to do with hockey’s minor league status. Hockey is a regional (and very white) sport. College hockey proves this more than anything! It’s practically a non-revenue sport even where it’s popular.
Plus, the NHL was horribly mismanaged during exactly the period when the other leagues’ revenues exploded.
You’d know that the biggest difference between the NHL and college games is the decision making by the players. Things happen a lot faster in the NHL. Some of that is size and strength related, but it is mostly due to experience and ice smarts. And, FWIW, there is a whole lot of shoving and even near-fighting in college that doesn’t get called by the refs as fighting because it would entail a suspension (game misconduct for the rest of the current game plus one additional game) for the players involved. And who wants to hit someone who has a full shield on anyway? 🙂
Besides, if college hockey were so clean and wholesome, I wouldn’t hesitate exposing my kids to the antics of its fans (Overheard at at BU game, targeted at BC: “Jesus hates you!” And of course BU’s stock cheer: “BC sucks!” Not picking on BU – I just go to more of their games than any other team).
If all of a sudden fighting were out of the NHL, the majority of the people who use that as their excuse as to why they don’t watch would find another excuse. A lot of people don’t like (or just don’t get) the game. Kind of like when I see coverage of cricket and think, “Does anyone understand this game, even the people playing it??”
There’s “Sieve, sieve, sieve” every time an opposing goalie gives up a goal, followed by the pretty nasty “You suck. At life. At goaltending. It’s all your fault.” This is repeated about 3 times. Then there’s the “Safety School” and “Sucks to…BU.” Last time I went I heard “Low, Lower, Lowest, Lowell, BU.” Which is kinda clever but none too charitable.
PU.
Anyway, I see no reason to get the vapors over college kids’ rivalry chants. I have been taking my kids to BC games for years– for a long time the hockey was better than that played on Causeway Street.
They’re smart enough to get the difference between the back-and-forth insult chanting and something that is ACTUALLY mean.
Doesn’t bother me. Just mentioned it because the original post expressed concern about the kids seeing fighting and the college game was presented as a wholesome alternative.
Bob, it’s true that there’s been a boxing collapse, but mixed martial arts has taken its place and them some.
If you’re going to say the NHL can’t allow fistfights, then you have to outright ban boxing, martial arts, mixed martial arts, and any other mano-a-mano battling.
I’m no fan of the hockey fights, and I’m no fan of boxing nor MMA. I would be OK if society decided two men attempting to injure each other — even if they are consenting adults — is not to be tolerated. But, we haven’t, not even close, and I just don’t see how it makes sense to go after the NHL before far more dangerous fighting is banned.
I do think that prize-fighting and certainly MMA are banned in many places, which one reason among many that they happen a lot in Nevada.
I do think that MMA can’t happen in Massachusetts.
I also fondly wish that the Atty Gnl would take the advice in this post and thus put a merciful end to her political career.
Loved this comment.
aka Martha Coakley when it comes to many issues.
Merci!
I like the bit about the AG, but this is inaccurate on combat sport sanctioning. Pretty much every state sanctions boxing and New York is the only holdout on MMA. There was a huge UFC event at the Garden just last week! A bunch of Red Sox, Bruins, and Pats players were there.
I knew one of my states bans MMA. I thought is was more.
Doubtless there will be many kickboxing bouts to draw the big-spending crowds to whatever casino eventually opens in Massachusetts.
A couple of times after a savage (but legal) hit of a Montreal Canadiens player, an investigation has been launched by the Surete du Quebec and/or Montreal police. Nothing has come of them. If hockey-mad Montreal isn’t going to file on a tough hit against one of their players, I wouldn’t expect Coakley to drag someone into the other type of box for fisticuffsmanship.
And hockey is the poor stepchild largely because half the country can only play it recreationally if doing so in a specialized, somewhat expensive, oft-unavailable facility.
Dino Ciccarelli was charged with assault and a fine and got one day of jail for an assault committed on the ice in the late 80;s. Marty McSorley was similarly charged with assault, in the late 90’s. Both of the assaults involved using their hockey stick to deliberately injure an opponent.
I’ve lived in the northeast most of my life. My dad used to hose down the back patio in winter, let it freeze, spray again, freeze, run a hot mop over it to smooth it out (He liked to call himself the ”Polish Zamboni” at that stage), repeat a couple of times and we kids would strap on the blades and practice. I have vivid memories of my youngest brother learning to skate by pushing a chair around the frozen over patio. This sort of thing is not possible south of, say, New Jersey. My brother and most of my friends went on to play seriously for some time. It was ubiquitous in Mass growing up.
Is exhibit a as to why most of my friends don’t take us liberals seriously.
or because not enough liberal comments agree with it?
I seem to recall this issue coming up many years ago. Leaving aside the issue of whether or not this should be prosecuted, if it were to be prosecuted is it up to the police to make an arrest and the DA to prosecute? I would not have thought that this would be an area where the AG would prosecute.
…demonstrates how well thought out this post is.
A simple question was being asked….let’s not eviscerate.
…is not an excuse.
The NHL’s biggest issue in dealing with its fans is keeping the game on the ice. The other major sports have had their work stoppages over my lifetime, but in the last twenty years, the NHL has topped them all by losing two half-seasons (1994-95 and 2012-13) and a full season (2004-5).
As cannoneo mentioned above, the NHL has been horribly managed in the age of Bettman. Work stoppages, moving all these teams from Canada and Hockey U.S. to the Sun Belt where nobody knows the game (I got so tired of not even recognizing the team logos on the TV screen).
Don’t forget that!
😉
Just kidding. Thanks everyone for the excellent and entertaining discussion.
The question, as I see it from the bench is whether this discussion is moot in light of climate change? Ice hockey may go the way of the dinosaur.