Saturday, March 3, 2012

Lots Of Questions To Be Answered


By Andrew McGilligan
SN Staff

It was interesting to hear all the talk recently about curbing or banning fighting from hockey. Everyone has an opinion on this from coast to coast, but I read with interest a recent article in the Telegraph-Journal that got the perspective of Sea Dogs players (most notably Grant West and Ian Saab) as well as head coach Gerard Gallant.

The most interesting comment for me was from Saab who fears rule changes could result in players taking cheap shots or more liberties with one another knowing they won’t have to drop the gloves to defend their actions.

We all know that dirty hits or plays such as checking from behind, elbows to the head, etc. can often result in concussions. So here’s a couple of things I would like to know before any rule changes are implemented.

The first is whether or not allowing fighting in a league results in less concussions and head injuries. Do guys take more liberties and cheap shots if fighting is banned. Does the threat of fisticuffs cut down on the number of serious injuries? An experiment could be done using the CHL and CIS, given that the CHL allows fighting (when I say allowed I mean it can happen without suspension) and the CIS does not.

It would be interesting to see the numbers, provided each team participated and didn’t hold back any information.

The second question is in regards to the NHL. While the NHL still allows fighting, the instigator rule has curbed it somewhat. Given the number of concussions sustained in the NHL and the outcry for the league to do something about it, I would like to know if there were more or less concussions before the rule was put into practice.

My basic curiosity can be boiled down to this: has the effort to reduce fighting resulted in the proliferation of concussions?

Certainly fighting has its own set of problems and potential damages for the players who do it - concussions being one of them -but before any drastic alterations are made to the game, I think some tough questions have to be answered.

Photo Credit: Marc Henwood/Station Nation

1 comment:

  1. Some very good points in this article. I'm not a fan of fighting as a rule (especially staged fights which happen on a faceoff) and I don't agree with Ian Saab's point of view. There are moments in a game in the heat of the moment where I'm less judgmental about it (last night's late hit on Pierre Durepos by PEI Rocket forward Bursey.)

    The one way to eliminate a lot of dirty play in hockey rest solely on the shoulders of the on-ice Officials who need to call a fair game and allow zero tolerance for such things to take place. How many times have you seen a player getting cross-checked or slashed repeatedly in front of an official who just ignores it? By doing this, they allow things to elevate to the next level where fighting ends up being a for-gone conclusion.

    The league also would need to make a concerted effort to inform all teams that dirty hits and cheap shots are no longer going to be tolerated.

    The sad thing is that guys like Ian and Grant get put into "goon" roles when they actually are good hockey players that fans like to see play a physical game that doesn’t require fighting. Mike Thomas was just as popular in his last season when he fought a whole lot less and his scoring was better for it. Maxime Villemare is another player that's exciting to watch and is a danger to score when on the ice. Just my two cents worth.

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