Fighting in the NHL is an aspect unparalleled by any professional sport. The way a team is able to build up momentum based off of a somewhat "side competition" between 2 role players isn't seen in basketball or football. Players are able to contribute to a hockey game in different ways. Not everyone was bourn with great hockey abilities like Pavel Datsyuk. Guys like the late Derek Boogaard and Paul Bissonnette contribute to their team with winning over momentum in a close game by dropping the gloves with an opponent. It's a trademark aspect to the game of hockey.
So as the game of hockey evolves, so does fighting. Ever since the lockout, fighting has been on the rise. Players are bigger and more talented and more momentum is needed in an average game of hockey. So lets look at trends in fighting in the post-lockout NHL.
2005-2006: 14 fights .1 fight per game 918 in regular season .7 fights per game
2006-2007: 13 fights .1 fight per game 987 in regular season .8 fights per game
2007-2008: 7 fights .08 fight per game 1316 in regular season 1 fight per game
2008-2009: 21 fights .2 fight per game 1458 in regular season 1.1 fight per game
2009-2010: 10 fights .1 fight per game 1423 in regular season 1.1 fight per game
This Season: 10 fights .1 fight so far so far. 1284 in regular season 1 fight per game
stats thanks to hockeyfights.com a great web site with all of your hockey fighting needs! check it out!
So fighting in the NHL appears to have increased significantly after the lockout. Now year after year the teams with more fighting majors appear to miss out on the playoffs (that's what it seems from the statistics.) Also in the playoffs fighting goes down significantly. Well this is because the better teams tend to have the players that like most to succeed on the ice and you can't do that in the penalty box. But that doesn't mean to completely omit fighting because it is a proven effective way to gain momentum in a game. Similar to a big hit, or a nice glove save, a won fight gives your team more energy in a close game. Just one note:
Ever since the lockout the Red Wings were always the team with lowest amount of fighting majors. Every single season since 2005 they've been in dead last in fights. And they've made the playoffs every one of those years.
There have been questions of taking fighting out of hockey due to major injuries especially after the death of Derek Boogaard. Boogaard died young and he suffered from multiple concussions throughout his career. So thoughts of eradicating fighting has been even furthered.
I want to share with you a passage from a fantastic book written by former Montreal goalie and present-day Canadian Congress member Ken Dryden and his book "The Game"
"Hockey was a rough game, and had been very nearly from its start. Its speed, its confined, congested playing area, had almost guaranteed it, and made body-checking accepted defense strategy. But the forward pass, and later the centerline, made body-checking immensely more difficult. Never abandoned, as it might have been, it evolved in part into something else after the war. The sequence was not surprising, for what does a defenseman do when a game speeds up and changes direction on him? When locked in tradition, he continues to do what his coach and his instincts have taught him to do. He body-checks. But more often than not, given the increased speed of the skaters, he misses, but not completely. For just as a well-avoided hip turns into a knee, so a should becomes a high-stick, or a hook, and a punishing ride into the boards.
This was something new. The stick and the boards had never been used so systematically in this way before. But, stuck in old traditions, it was how the defense responded to game's new speed. And the league allowed it. To the finesse player, it was one more crushing blow. What good was it to skate and stickhandle to gain an advantage so easily wrestled away? Why not just dump and chase like the rest? It was from this simmering frustration that violence emerged. Brawling and stick-swinging became more frequent and vicious than before. Not grim and calculated, goon against good, as it was decades later; this was human nature boiling over. Often it was the game's biggest stars, Maurice Richard, Gordie Howe, Ted Lindsay, Geoffrion, hooked and high-sticked until they would take no more. The league intervened with fines and suspensions for the worst abuses, but did nothing to penalize its insidious causes, in the end more damaging to the game.
The effect has been profound. The game was pushed far more completely down the dump-and-chase road, its various alternatives plainly discouraged. The game was made more violent. The hockey stick had been allowed a new use. Not just as a tool of offense and defense, but as a weapon as well, a legal weapon to impede and punish. Those with memories of the 1920s or 1930s, or before, will insist there were more series incidents of violence in other times. Perhaps so. But it was in the late 1940s that a pattern of violence entered the game. For the first time, it became part of the regular play. And when it wasn't removed, it only meant it would get worse. The nature of violence, the emerging style of play, guaranteed it."
Dryden went on to explain that fighting was mainly instituted to prevent such violence from occurring and it was a useful instrument to keeping the game relatively-clean. Dryden was one of the most well-spoken hockey players in NHL history and is very knowledgeable. He feels that fighting is necessary in the game today.
So as the game of hockey evolves, so does fighting. Ever since the lockout, fighting has been on the rise. Players are bigger and more talented and more momentum is needed in an average game of hockey. So lets look at trends in fighting in the post-lockout NHL.
2005-2006: 14 fights .1 fight per game 918 in regular season .7 fights per game
2006-2007: 13 fights .1 fight per game 987 in regular season .8 fights per game
2007-2008: 7 fights .08 fight per game 1316 in regular season 1 fight per game
2008-2009: 21 fights .2 fight per game 1458 in regular season 1.1 fight per game
2009-2010: 10 fights .1 fight per game 1423 in regular season 1.1 fight per game
This Season: 10 fights .1 fight so far so far. 1284 in regular season 1 fight per game
stats thanks to hockeyfights.com a great web site with all of your hockey fighting needs! check it out!
So fighting in the NHL appears to have increased significantly after the lockout. Now year after year the teams with more fighting majors appear to miss out on the playoffs (that's what it seems from the statistics.) Also in the playoffs fighting goes down significantly. Well this is because the better teams tend to have the players that like most to succeed on the ice and you can't do that in the penalty box. But that doesn't mean to completely omit fighting because it is a proven effective way to gain momentum in a game. Similar to a big hit, or a nice glove save, a won fight gives your team more energy in a close game. Just one note:
Ever since the lockout the Red Wings were always the team with lowest amount of fighting majors. Every single season since 2005 they've been in dead last in fights. And they've made the playoffs every one of those years.
There have been questions of taking fighting out of hockey due to major injuries especially after the death of Derek Boogaard. Boogaard died young and he suffered from multiple concussions throughout his career. So thoughts of eradicating fighting has been even furthered.
I want to share with you a passage from a fantastic book written by former Montreal goalie and present-day Canadian Congress member Ken Dryden and his book "The Game"
"Hockey was a rough game, and had been very nearly from its start. Its speed, its confined, congested playing area, had almost guaranteed it, and made body-checking accepted defense strategy. But the forward pass, and later the centerline, made body-checking immensely more difficult. Never abandoned, as it might have been, it evolved in part into something else after the war. The sequence was not surprising, for what does a defenseman do when a game speeds up and changes direction on him? When locked in tradition, he continues to do what his coach and his instincts have taught him to do. He body-checks. But more often than not, given the increased speed of the skaters, he misses, but not completely. For just as a well-avoided hip turns into a knee, so a should becomes a high-stick, or a hook, and a punishing ride into the boards.
This was something new. The stick and the boards had never been used so systematically in this way before. But, stuck in old traditions, it was how the defense responded to game's new speed. And the league allowed it. To the finesse player, it was one more crushing blow. What good was it to skate and stickhandle to gain an advantage so easily wrestled away? Why not just dump and chase like the rest? It was from this simmering frustration that violence emerged. Brawling and stick-swinging became more frequent and vicious than before. Not grim and calculated, goon against good, as it was decades later; this was human nature boiling over. Often it was the game's biggest stars, Maurice Richard, Gordie Howe, Ted Lindsay, Geoffrion, hooked and high-sticked until they would take no more. The league intervened with fines and suspensions for the worst abuses, but did nothing to penalize its insidious causes, in the end more damaging to the game.
The effect has been profound. The game was pushed far more completely down the dump-and-chase road, its various alternatives plainly discouraged. The game was made more violent. The hockey stick had been allowed a new use. Not just as a tool of offense and defense, but as a weapon as well, a legal weapon to impede and punish. Those with memories of the 1920s or 1930s, or before, will insist there were more series incidents of violence in other times. Perhaps so. But it was in the late 1940s that a pattern of violence entered the game. For the first time, it became part of the regular play. And when it wasn't removed, it only meant it would get worse. The nature of violence, the emerging style of play, guaranteed it."
Dryden went on to explain that fighting was mainly instituted to prevent such violence from occurring and it was a useful instrument to keeping the game relatively-clean. Dryden was one of the most well-spoken hockey players in NHL history and is very knowledgeable. He feels that fighting is necessary in the game today.
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