NHL banning lid-less fights a no-brainer

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/09/2014 (4024 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was a small moment in a pre-season game and not much of a ripple in the greater context of professional hockey, but it was a step forward — and the continuation of the search for a safer NHL.

Staged fights in which the participants remove their helmets shouldn’t be acceptable in today’s NHL, and thankfully the league is moving towards eliminating them. Pro sports sell violence, but there’s a difference between a well-timed bodycheck and the barbarism of bare-knuckle fighting with no head protection.

And if you don’t agree with that, fine, but understand NHL commissioner Gary Bettman must now more than ever be cognizant of what a judge in a civil proceeding will consider sport vs. blood sport.

More and more the NHL is looking for ways to keep its players safe. Maybe it’s because the league has seen the light and understands this is the right thing to do. Or maybe it’s a result of pending lawsuits over concussions, where plaintiffs will attempt to portray the league as negligent regarding the well-being of its key employees.

Either way, it’s a good thing for NHL players and hockey as a whole.

In Monday’s pre-season game between the Winnipeg Jets and Minnesota Wild, two players squared off to fight and removed their helmets to make a clearer path to one another’s brains but were stopped cold by the linesmen.

Jets tough guy Anthony Peluso and Wild winger Curt Gogol tried to squirm free, but the linesmen clamped down and escorted the pair to the penalty box. The duo each received two-minute minor penalties for roughing and additional two-minute minors for unsportsmanlike conduct.

NHL vice-president of hockey operations Colin Campbell told the Free Press: “We’ve given the linesmen a directive to stop fights when the players remove their helmets, if they can do so safely. That’s when players get hurt.”

Players try to remove their helmets for a number of reasons. Silly machismo (this point seems a little redundant considering the context but apparently there is tough and then there is really tough), to prevent those pesky broken knuckles that result when a fist smashes against a hard plastic helmet and to up the showmanship inherent in staged fighting such as the bout Peluso and Gogol tried to set up on Monday.

A few ill-informed tweets came my way after Monday night’s incident, one suggesting the players would be safer with helmets off (hands get broken on helmets and cut on visors) and others stating the linesmen would soon stop intervening once one of them takes a punch to the head.

The first statement is beyond ridiculous. Fighting is illegal and is penalized with a five-minute major. Any time the linesmen can prevent such an act, they should. To suggest saving the players’ hands from wear and tear should supersede protecting their brains shows complete disrespect for the players and the game. The NHL isn’t a circus, and players aren’t caged animals released for our amusement.

The late Don Sanderson died as a result of injuries suffered in a senior men’s hockey game when his unprotected head hit the ice at the end of a fight. There are few things as dangerous in the game of hockey as fighting and trying to toss an opponent to the ice when helmets aren’t involved.

Secondly, linesmen have been instructed to step in only when it’s viewed as safe. But there needs to be respect between the players and officials. NHL officials look out for the safety of NHL players. It should work both ways.

We can argue all day about the benefits of keeping some form of fighting in the NHL, but there’s no argument against player safety that holds even a drop of water.

gary.lawless@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @garylawless

Is the NHL responding appropriately by stopping fights when possible? Join the conversation in the comments below.