No fight left

Fighting rules in hockey are as toothless as Bobby Clarke.

Recently, the Brandon Sun newspaper (where I enjoy my employ) published a front-page photo of a fight during a local hockey game. It was a compelling photo, and it accurately summed up the story of the (fight-filled) game.

But we sure caught some flack from readers over the past few days, who claimed that we were glorifying violence and that fighting wasn’t a part of the game.

So, today we published a long mea culpa as an editorial, which can basically be summed up as “we don’t like to piss off subscribers, and we’ll be more circumspect in the future.”

Yeah, we’re ballsy like that.

Now, I don’t have a real opinion on whether or not fighting should be a part of the game of hockey. Personally, I don’t really like hockey one way or the other.

And I don’t have any say in the editorial direction of the newspaper. I neither write the editorials nor own the paper.

But I have to take issue with at least part of the reasoning on display in what we published:

There are certainly some justifiable reasons to drop the gloves — when an opposing player has taken a cheap shot at your star player or your goaltender, or when emotions during a key game simply get the better of a player.

That is, not to be too subtle, frank and total bullshit. Enforcement of any rule-breaking, like cheap shots, should be left up to the referees. And if emotions running high — especially in a physical and contact-ridden sport like hockey — is justification for fights, then why hasn’t it spilled out into other sports?

Athletes can keep a lid on their emotions. They do in sports like rugby and football. They even do it in boxing, where “below-the-belt” shots are immediately punished.

To suggest that hockey players are the only ones whose temper gets the better of them is ridiculous.

The only reason that players drop the gloves in hockey is because its allowed. A couple of minutes in the penalty box is not a punishment for any real rule-breaking; it’s just a slap on the wrist. In fat, it’s almost like an intentional foul in basketball — you accept the token punishment because breakig the rule is worth it from a game-strategy point of view.

If the powers-that-be wanted to eliminate fighting, they would stop turning a blind eye to it. Let’s see, if your player is involved in a fight, the other team gets a two-minute power play and you lose that specific player for a full game misconduct, automatically? That might do it — if it were enforced.

As long as fighting is tacitly accepted as part of the game, then its part of the game. So readers who complained that we printed a picture of it should rethink their priorities. We’re not in charge of making the rules, we just print what goes on.

Sure, even now, fighting is only a small part of the game — probably less than a minute, all told, of ice time. In fact, the only thing that takes up less time during a hockey game is the actual goal-scoring!

The full editorial, plus the original picture, are locked behind the Brandon Sun’s subscription wall, but if you’ve got a login and password, you can find them.