Hockey fighting.

[Your Salad]

As a non Hockey fan I have always known fighting was a part of the sport of Hockey. Best I can tell is fighting somehow allows protection for the smaller faster skill players.(Is this true?) I have gathered fighting is not as celebrated in the modern pro environment compared to a much rougher past. I also dont believe I have seen a fight in the Olympics.
Can someone please help me out with an explanation of why fighting such an important part of the game.

P.S. another thread got me going down the youtube rabbit hole looking at Hockey fights. Also I recently watched the movie "Goon". Not a great movie and not the reason for the thread. It did kind of fill me in on the reason for enforcers on a team.

Edit: Now that I have seen more fights on youtube I am more confused. Does anyone who can fight try and teabag everyone on the other team?

 

[the ambush]

When you have seen many ice hockey fights you will begin to notice the small details like a player's helmet having a visor on it. If a player with a helmet and visor chooses to fight they should remove the helmet and fight fairly and ethically.

 

[sangreporsangre]

Fighting in hockey is just a natural extension of the intensity and emotion that the game is played with. These are a bunch of big boys skating around at high speeds chasing a little piece of rubber, and there's no way to go out of bounds....shit is gonna get hectic. When you consider that every single player is carrying a weapon in his hand, I guess fighting has always been considered a safer release valve for some of that aggression. Now if you go way back in the day, pretty much all hockey players would fight. But I guess when the Gretzky type of finesse players showed up, teams would have a guy (or several guys) who couldn't do too much besides fight to protect these softer, skilled players.

But there's more to fighting in hockey as well. A lot of times if a team is down a couple of goals or whatever, they're playing flat, the crowd is dead etc a spirited fight can swing the momentum. I've seen it happen so many times. Over the years though, the NHL has morphed into more of a European style league, or NCAA style as opposed to a Canadian style. So fights are pretty rare these days, and there's no room on the bench for an enforcer on most teams. Tbh the enforcers of the last 10 years or so have been pretty ridiculous.....6'7 270 pound goons who can't even skate, go out on the ice for one shift where they fight the other massive freak on the other team in a lame fight where they pat each other on the butt after. I'm not really gonna miss those guys, but I do miss the intensity that the NHL used to have. Even the fights lack intensity these days. But I hope they don't ban fighting altogether.

 

[sangreporsangre]

Btw RIP to big #24.......if you're a fan of old-time hockey and Probie isn't one of your all-time faves, something is seriously wrong with you.

 

[Rimbaud82]

This was a really good documentary:

I never really knew a whole lot about ice hockey either so the the semi-legal fighting is really interesting to me. In sports I do like (i.e. rugby/rugby league, hurling, gaelic football, aussie rules mostly) you do get fights because like any physical sport sometimes the aggression spills over, more so back in the day of course, but even then there's no 'code' for regular fighting, or enforcers whose only job is to fuck people up. That seems unique to hockey. It's interesting, I guess like already mentioned a lot of it is because players are flying around at high speeds, with hard hits but out of bounds and the speed of the game means the refs can't really stop it if a guy just decides to take out another player.

 

[wlu.29]

Domi > probert

 

[Makani]

Domi > probert

Even as a Penguins fan, Domi icing Ulf is one of the GOAT hockey moments. I'm anti-fighting in general, but if a scrap is organic I don't really have a problem with it. RIP Boogaard.

 

[wlu.29]

Even as a Penguins fan, Domi icing Ulf is one of the GOAT hockey moments. I'm anti-fighting in general, but if a scrap is organic I don't really have a problem with it. RIP Boogaard.

Yup I loved iginla vs. Lecavalier in the Stanley Cup finals that's all good in my book

 

[BearGrounds]

 

[Graves The Elder]

fighting is being systematically eliminated from the sport.
it's down 78% from previous years.
more about players hitting their head on the ice as they go down, TBI/concussions etc.
lawsuits against the league and big money payouts.

good bye hockey fights.

 

[MadSquabbles500]

As a non Hockey fan I have always known fighting was a part of the sport of Hockey. Best I can tell is fighting somehow allows protection for the smaller faster skill players.(Is this true?) I have gathered fighting is not as celebrated in the modern pro environment compared to a much rougher past. I also dont believe I have seen a fight in the Olympics.
Can someone please help me out with an explanation of why fighting such an important part of the game.

P.S. another thread got me going down the youtube rabbit hole looking at Hockey fights. Also I recently watched the movie "Goon". Not a great movie and not the reason for the thread. It did kind of fill me in on the reason for enforcers on a team.

Edit: Now that I have seen more fights on youtube I am more confused. Does anyone who can fight try and teabag everyone on the other team?

Fighting makes hockey more entertaining, and helps with attracting fans, and viewers, and thereby ticket sales, commercials, merchandise.

 

[Your Salad]

Thanks for the education guys. I like the term semi legal.

 

[Thai Domi]

 

[Thai Domi]

Btw RIP to big #24.......if you're a fan of old-time hockey and Probie isn't one of your all-time faves, something is seriously wrong with you.

Probert is the Legend. GOAT NHL Fighter.

 

[Thai Domi]

The Mona Lisa of hockey fights



With much hespect.

 

[Graves The Elder]

lol probs was a fucking beast back in the day
war domi

 

[USAUSA1]

Concussions,lawsuits, etc. has slowed down fighting

 

[HereticBD]

It's importance as a game strategy is overblown. I get fighting over a cheap shot, but the idea that it can hype up the team to play better, is ridiculous.

"We're down 5-2, what do we do?"

"Oh', I got it! Let's just beat the shit out of someone. That'll get us back on track!"

I really wouldn't care if they eliminated it. It's only a matter of time before some guy gets KTFO, and smashes his head on the ice, slips into a coma and dies. Then the league will be all "How did we let this happen?". Guys are getting bigger and stronger too, so you see a lot more KO's then you used to. I'm actually amazed that they're still "debating" to get rid of it. They're just asking for a tragedy to happen.

 

[Graves The Elder]

agreed, it's use as a 'motivator' has never really been backed up by results.
oh sure, it might get a team pumped up for a bit but it's never turned a game around IMO

 

[UncleJosh]

Bob Probert is one of my all time favorite hockey players. One of if not THE best overall fighters in NHL history but he actually did have skills and could play even though he chose not to especially once his rep as a fighter grew and he embraced it. Dude was coked out of his mind too.

I think he donated his brain to science and they said his brain was so fucked that it was like an 80 year old man with dementia I think unless I am confusing him with one of the many other athletes with CTE.