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Rules, equipment change fighting's impact on NHL

(China Daily)
Updated: 2011-05-18 08:24

This Jan 19, 2006, file photo shows Montreal Canadiens' Sheldon Souray (right) fighting with Calgary Flames' Darren McCarty during their game in Calgary, Canada. Fighting is so much a part of NHL culture that there is a special category of players devoted to doing the game's dirty work. [Photo/Agencies]

NEW YORK - Detroit Red Wing opponents knew better than to mess with Steve Yzerman. Take a cheap shot at him - or any of the other Wings, for that matter - and you'd have to answer to Bob Probert and, in later years, Darren McCarty.

It was an on-ice code of justice, and it's proven so effective over the years that players like Probert, McCarty and Derek Boogaard built careers dishing out punishing hits.

But Boogaard's sudden death on Friday, five months after a season-ending concussion, and his family's decision to donate his brain to the Boston University project that found Probert had signs of brain trauma resulting from blows to the head, is bringing added scrutiny to fighting's place in the NHL.

"I think the league does a good job. They're trying to limit head shots," Tampa Bay Lightning center Nate Thompson said on Monday. "I don't think they can (ban fighting entirely). That's part of the game. It's a physical sport and it always has been. If they take that out of the game that takes a part of the history out of the game."

Like American football, hockey is a game of controlled violence. Players are skating full-speed around an enclosed rink, and collisions - some intentional, some not - are bound to happen. Referees are there to make sure transgressions are punished. But when they don't, or don't see them occur, that's when players take matters into their own hands.

Boston's Big Bad Bruins brought the rough-and-tumble style to the ice, and the Philadelphia Flyers' Broad Street Bullies are considered the role models for modern-day enforcers. What people forget is that the Flyers only started beating people up because owner Ed Snider got tired of other teams picking on his side.

"That fighting stuff way overshadowed the talent we had on the team," Bob "the Hound" Kelly said. "We don't have talent, we don't win anything."

But the Flyers did win, hoisting the Stanley Cup in 1974 and '75.

By the 1980s, every team had an enforcer or two whose primary role was to protect his teammates by whatever means necessary, whenever necessary.

"These guys are so big and strong," said Dave "the Hammer" Schultz, who often wrapped his hands in tape for protection and set an NHL record in the 1974-75 season with 472 penalty minutes. "We weren't big and strong. I could punch a guy, hit him right in the nose, and he's not going to get a concussion. But I didn't train to punch."

Associated Press