I have to admit that I'm not much of a hockey fan.   I tried to like it as a kid but it didn't take.   Back then, you really couldn't follow the puck well on our lousy TV sets.   I enjoyed watching live games like our local high school team.   There you could sit, watch the whole rink, and understand the ebb and flow of the game since you could follow the puck.   You could also enjoy the athleticism of the players as they skated forwards, backwards, and sideways, passed, shot, etc.   I even enjoyed pro hockey games on the few occasions I was able to catch a live one.   But I never became as dedicated a fan as I had become of the sports of football, baseball, basketball, etc.   These days I'm happy I'm not a fan of hockey.   The sport has some serious issues which it chooses to ignore.

Did you catch the video clip of the fistfight during the New York Rangers game?   One player landed a blow so hard it knocked the other player to the floor and ultimately resulted in him receiving a concussion.   That's the first time I've seen such a thing in hockey.   Most of the time players end up with bloody noses, facial bruises or just a jersey which has been stretched out of shape.   But any fight in the middle of a hockey game is disgraceful, even shameful.

Despite what many fans think, hockey players are not great fighters.   Not a one of them would last a round in the ring with an amateur boxer of any skill.   That's true even if the amateur fighter were several tens of pounds lighter, and noticeably smaller than the hockey player who dared to enter the ring.   Boxing has its own elegance as extremely well trained fighters work exclusively on the fundamental skills they need to throw a good punch and defend against someone else doing likewise.   A hockey player who got into the ring with a trained fighter would be ripped to shreds and wind up hitting the canvas before the bell at the end of the first round sounded.   Fighting is not the strong point of the athletes who work on their own set of fundamental skills of skating while working a stick ill-suited for stopping, shooting and otherwise manipulating an impossibly fast little puck of hard rubber.

Hockey players' real skills are a wonder to behold.   They are excellent skaters and do learn to work miracles with that funny stick.   Despite my lack of overall interest in the sport, I do have high regard for their skill set.   I could never learn to do those things.   But the fighting detracts from those same skills.   Hockey fights are boring affairs.   Like I said, if I wanted to watch good fighting skills, I would find myself a boxing match to watch.

It is an interesting exercise to extrapolate the National Hockey League's approach to fighting to other sports as well as the lower levels of hockey itself.   Baketball is as much a contact sport as hockey.   It would be easy to extend the NHL's approach to the NBA.   Two players go up for a rebound and collide.   One says something to ther other and the next thing you know, they are pulling at each other's jersey with one hand while pounding away at their faces with the other.   The referees stand idly by until there is a break in the action and then separate the players.   They call technical fouls on each team, designated players shoot the foul shots, the two players sit down for 2 to 5 minutes to cool off, and the game continues.   Each team would have a designated fighter or two whose job it would be to take out the best offensive player from the other team by starting a fight.   Every game would have at least one all out fistfight.   And we'd all either run for the exits, never to return at least not with our kids, or sit there and cheer on an event which has absolutely nothing to do with the outcome of the contest we paid big money to watch.

We could even extend the NHL approach to women's professional basketball.   Now that would be some real fun.   And if we extend hockey's fighting to other sports like basketball, football or baseball, we should also extend it back into the youth leagues since, quite obviously, we see the fighting as part of the sport.   We would have raised fist fighting skills to a point where they are considered one of the fundamental skills of the game.   We could then teach our boys to fight properly instead of this ridiculous display which passes for a prize fight at professional games.   We could teach them how to throw and defend against a real punch.   We would allow the kids to have fights during youth games since that's just another of the many facets of the sport.   They'd have to hone these necessary skills sometime.

The NHL could get rid of the ridiculous, inelegant, shameful fighting it currently permits anytime they wanted to.   All they would have to do is send the player starting the fight to the penalty box for the remainder of the game leaving the innocent team a permanent power play.   That would change the outcome of games and perhaps the playoffs.   The league could also do what other sports leagues do by suspending players for a game or two every time they get into a fight.   Repeat occurrences could result in longer and longer suspensions, ultimately leading up to removal from the league.   Players starting fights could be fined significant amounts.   There's any number of options which the league could use separately or in conjunction that would completely end fighting on the game floor.   It would be a simple matter.   But the league chooses not to do that.   Maybe that's why it struggles with such poor TV ratings.

Labels: Sports