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I’ve brought this up before, but I’ve been in the “ban fighting” camp for several years now.
Is fighting fun and entertaining to watch? It certainly can be. I will always remember Fight Night at the Joe (and several other Wings-Avalanche tussles) fondly. Getting rid of fighting means losing the possibility of future memorable, sometimes rivalry-defining moments. There’s a certain sadness to that, for sure.
But the reality is that fighting is really only a small part of the game, and except for maybe a 30ish year window from the 70s to early 00s kind of always has been. Fights were relatively rare in the O6 era. They increased significantly in the expansion era, mainly because the number of available NHL jobs increased much faster than the supply of talented hockey players. The classic enforcer is a byproduct of overexpansion—how does a player with a limited skillset get picked for an NHL roster over dozens (or hundreds) of other replacement-level minor league plugs? By being willing to drop the gloves and play on (or outside) the edge of the rulebook. Now that the talent pool has caught up, fighting has declined back to historic lows.
There’s also basically no evidence to corroborate the popular fan arguments that fighting actually works as a cheap shot deterrent, or is a reliable way to alter the momentum of the game. All research into this using any kind of quantitative data (injury rates, non-obstruction infraction rates, post-fight scoring rates, etc.) that I have seen basically shows no link whatsoever. If anything, cheap shots increase when fighting rates are high, though correlation does not imply causation here.
Meanwhile, the data on the impact fighting has on fighters get worse and worse. There’s obviously the risk of an immediate on-ice injury, like the one that recently occurred in the WHL. But the long-term effects of hockey fighting on many of its most prominent fighters (brain damage, psychological trauma, suicide) are also extremely grim.
So, knowing that (1) fighting is only a small part of the game now, with the vast majority of games not featuring one, (2) fighting appears to have minimal if any effect on game outcomes, and (3) fighting is extremely dangerous and can cause life-long trauma, I just don’t think “fighting is fun to watch sometimes” is a good enough argument for keeping it.
Yes, hockey is still dangerous even without fighting. Yes, players in theory know and accept the risks. Yes, they are adults who can make their own decisions. All that’s true. But there has to be some point where we draw the line between “this level of risk is necessary and acceptable” and “this level of risk cannot be justified.” We don’t let players play without helmets (or even visors) anymore. And I think we’ve reached the point where we shouldn’t let them fight anymore either. Far too much potential for damage for marginal if any real benefit beyond an exciting moment every handful of games. |
