Goon vs. Goon. Don't need it!

[SportsDoc]

In a game that saw 10 Fighting Majors handed out to open the season between Toronto and Montreal, the Goon vs. Goon fight in the third saw Leafs Goon Colton Orr lose his balance and while falling pull Habs Goon George Parros down with him. Parros hit the ice face first and at full force. Carried off on a stretcher.

Both Orr and Parros had 2 fighting majors, both against each other. They logged a combined 6+ minutes of ice time in the game and yet managed 20 PIM's each. The Parros injury looked ominous.

Do we really need the Goon on Goon fights in the NHL? I say we don't. Get rid of them.

Story and video here.

[wlu_lax6]

I like hockey but don't claim to really know the sport that well. I find fighting unnecessary. Other contact sports don't need it, but I figure the NHL, AHL, Juniors, ECHL, etc know what the game needs and does not need more than I do. Especially when it comes to big defensemen going after star goal scorers on suspect plays.

Feel bad that he got hurt, but I think this was just an accident. This did not seem dirty to me.

Does Hockey need fighting. As a fan I don't need it.

Side note: I met Parros 2 years ago when he was with the Ducks. Parros (He is a big supporter of Movember and I was at a kickoff event with him and the Ducks). He was a true gentlemen. His teammates loved him. He was super nice to me. Just talked about the game, his role, his scars from practice, and his passion for playing.

[govmentchedda]

Get rid of fighting. But, what do I know, I'm just a sunbelt fan.

[sancarlos]

I think there is a need for "policemen" for the role such as Semenko/McSorley played with Gretzky. But, I think the goon vs. goon fighting is superfluous and I'd be happy if it left the game. But, that ain't gonna happen.

I'm just a Californian, but I am flying to Saskatchewan right now.

[Scottie]

I find it boring. I've said this a few times on Swamps and it is a complete reversal of how I used to think years ago but it bores me. Two guys who really aren't hockey players, who just happen to be dressed like hockey players, pre-arranging fights, or are at least expected to go at it because they're in the same building, is boring. The ten minutes after the fight where nothing happens but refs cleaning up the mess is boring. The entire contrivance of it is boring.

Parros iced by a mis-thrown right? (Not a Meatloaf song) He knocked himself out, head on ice. Ice being rather fucking hard. One does increase one's chances of getting knocked out in some fashion or other when fighting the other team's goon. And these are 250-pound guys throwing bare knuckles at very close range.

The only parallel I can think of is its exact and natural polar opposite. Diving in soccer. Everyone hates diving in soccer, everyone knows it is bullshit, the fake injuries, how fundamentally pussy it is, bitches wasting time, yet there it remains. Nothing is done to get rid of it. Why? Too big a part of the game, too ingrained. Why is it a parallel? Both soccerball diving and hockey fighting are flaws in the games that have never been solved. They're here to stay. Because networks and media that cover hockey wring their little hands about how terrible fighting is but when one happens in a game? That network will replay the entire 90-second scrap, commenting all the while. They'll replay a goal for about 15-seconds until they get that you've seen it. And "the fans love fighting, just look at them standing and shrieking". That seems to be true. It gets the zoo animals wound up in a mass consciousness frenzy. Give the people what they want, eh. Inevitably purists are outnumbered by lunchbuckets just as Beethoven album sales pale compared to the latest poptart. Stupid sells.

ETA: There is a time for enforcement in hockey. No doubt. But these days, if Hacky Sporco chops at Swifty Schnellwrist it results in a fight between Helmut Pfropfenkopf and Francois LeGorille. That's not the game policing itself, that's just a farce.

[rass]

Parros iced by a mis-thrown right? (Not a Meatloaf song)

Stick tap.

[degenerasian]

I think diving in soccer is part of the game. With teams being equal, it's the team that cons the ref the best wins the game. Especially if they can get a feel for the game early that the ref is incompetant and susceptible to being conned. A competant ref waves his arms wildly and mocks the diving player so that every fan in the stand knows what he thought of it and the player cuts it out.

Isn't it similar to the strike zone in baseball? The pitcher will take advantage of the outside corner if the ump keeps giving it to him. Here's an extra inch outside, here's another one. The ump stares down the pitcher enough times, he will know that that pitch will never be a strike.

Two goons fighting has no impact on the game. It's an equal penalty, it's not conning the ref, it's not taking advantage of anything, it doesn't gain momentum. It does nothing.

But how do you eliminate it? Should there be a rule that every dressed player must have 8 minute of ice time? Due we reduce rosters to 3 lines and 4 defenseman? Do we reduce the game to 15 minute periods instead of 20?

I don't think we an eliminate fighting unless the refs call everything right down to the letter of the law.
Even that isn't enough. If Scottie is my goalie and sancarlos runs him.. sure it's a 2 minute penalty but is that enough? I need to be able to punch him in the face (or at least try to)

[howard]

I find it boring. I've said this a few times on Swamps and it is a complete reversal of how I used to think years ago but it bores me. Two guys who really aren't hockey players, who just happen to be dressed like hockey players, pre-arranging fights, or are at least expected to go at it because they're in the same building, is boring. The ten minutes after the fight where nothing happens but refs cleaning up the mess is boring. The entire contrivance of it is boring.

Substitute "boxers" for "hockey players" and you've described the heavyweight division south of the Klitschko brothers.

[Pruitt]

Get rid of fighting. But, what do I know, I'm just a sunbelt fan.

Then you just don't understand the "unwritten rules" of the game as we Canadians come to learn at a young age. At least that's what mouth breathers like Don Cherry and Mike Milbury believe.

And one of those unwritten rules is that in order to be successful, a team needs a hulking brute who can barely skate, a guy who whenever he appears on the ice is mere seconds from throwing down.

By my way of calculating, the league is less than a month away from the next stick swinging atrocity. Such nonsense.

[Scottie]

Kelly McParland agrees

[Steve of phpBB]

The only parallel I can think of is its exact and natural polar opposite. Diving in soccer. Everyone hates diving in soccer, everyone knows it is bullshit, the fake injuries, how fundamentally pussy it is, bitches wasting time, yet there it remains. Nothing is done to get rid of it. Why? Too big a part of the game, too ingrained. Why is it a parallel? Both soccerball diving and hockey fighting are flaws in the games that have never been solved. They're here to stay. Because networks and media that cover hockey wring their little hands about how terrible fighting is but when one happens in a game? That network will replay the entire 90-second scrap, commenting all the while. They'll replay a goal for about 15-seconds until they get that you've seen it. And "the fans love fighting, just look at them standing and shrieking". That seems to be true. It gets the zoo animals wound up in a mass consciousness frenzy. Give the people what they want, eh. Inevitably purists are outnumbered by lunchbuckets just as Beethoven album sales pale compared to the latest poptart. Stupid sells.

This is a good point. I do think, though, that fighting in hockey would be much easier to eliminate than diving in soccer, since it is so much easier to identify and punish. You know when two players are fighting on the ice, and you could automatically suspend the participants. Problem solved. You can't always be certain if a player is diving.

[Rams Fanny]

To be a bit contrarian, there is one aspect to the goon fighting that actually helps the game. I've seen many games that were escalating in chippiness until the two goons square off then everyone gets back to hockey. It's as if they all get their frustration out through osmosis. It certainly doesn't always happen that way (and certainly not last night) but enough to make it acceptable to me.

What I don't like is the WWE style stuff as mentioned previously. Last night two guys stopped and agreed to take their helmets off before a fight. I understand the (new?) helmet rule but that's ridiculous.

[Scottie]

You can't always be certain if a player is diving.

On the field, that's very true. Players take advantage of the size of the field. One ref can only see so much on such an expanse. Replay reveals dives. But replay for soccer itself is its own tangled debate. Straight red for a dive? Post-game sanctions if dives are caught by replay? Add a second ref? Hockey felt adding a second ref was a necessary evolution due to the sheer speed of the game.

In some environs a "good" hockey scrap is expected and appreciated just as in some soccer cultures a "good" exaggerated pratfall is part of the theatre. Unlike in America, as we all well know, soccer is far larger than life in places where a player writhing on the field is akin to the murder of Agamemnon on an ancient Athenian stage.

Completely agree, Steve, that hockey fighting is the easiest of nonsenses to eliminate. Suspension and fines, escalating with repetition, would likely go a long way. Yet one cannot help feeling that if they league(s) actually wanted to eliminate fighting from the game, particularly staged fights, they would have done so a long time ago.

[degenerasian]

Yup. The NHL loves fighting. Shit like last night make headlines.

It's a very long season and already this morning there is a fight about fighting.

They love it, they just can't say it outloud.

[Shirley]

Post-game sanctions if dives are caught by replay?

This is exactly how I've felt dives should be handled in soccer. It's hard to see them live, but everyone watching on TV usually gets a good look. I'd like a process where any obvious dives are dealt post-game yellow cards. If that player otherwise already had a yellow (or dives twice in a game), now it's a red and they have to sit out the next game. I have to think that would dramatically (ha!) lower the dive rate.

Hockey could easily get rid of fighting the same way - tough sanctions and make guys miss games. It worked in baseball and basketball and it would work in hockey too. Guys hate to miss games - AND the paychecks that go along with them.

I've never really understood how a sport like hockey, with such beautiful movement and skill, could allow fighting to so dramatically mar the game. It's ugly and clunky and really should be beneath highly-paid, elite athletes.

If they get tough on fighting and find that it leads to more cheapshots and grabbing and whatnot, then crack down on those next. Get the game flowing again.

[P.D.X.]

Post-game sanctions if dives are caught by replay?

This is exactly how I've felt dives should be handled in soccer. It's hard to see them live, but everyone watching on TV usually gets a good look. I'd like a process where any obvious dives are dealt post-game yellow cards. If that player otherwise already had a yellow (or dives twice in a game), now it's a red and they have to sit out the next game. I have to think that would dramatically (ha!) lower the dive rate.

MLS Disciplinary Committee does this, although a quick googling shows only 5 players have been fined this year. Still, better than nothing.

ETA: Cards. Fines. Whatever.

[Shirley]

Post-game sanctions if dives are caught by replay?

This is exactly how I've felt dives should be handled in soccer. It's hard to see them live, but everyone watching on TV usually gets a good look. I'd like a process where any obvious dives are dealt post-game yellow cards. If that player otherwise already had a yellow (or dives twice in a game), now it's a red and they have to sit out the next game. I have to think that would dramatically (ha!) lower the dive rate.

MLS Disciplinary Committee does this, although a quick googling shows only 5 players have been fined this year. Still, better than nothing.

ETA: Cards. Fines. Whatever.

Having the rule and hardly using it is almost worse than not having it. I don't really watch mls; is there a lot of diving?

[Scottie]

I don't really watch mls; is there a lot of diving?

There certainly is in the Vancouver Whitecaps games. It was so bad in a game a month or so ago (against Portland maybe?) that I almost came here and asked the same question. I was surprised to see diving comparable to some of the wankier Euro clubs.

[howard]

…diving comparable to some of the wankier Euro clubs.

The march toward world-class footie continues!

[Pruitt]

Kelly McParland agrees

From the article:

It’s a bit like a Canadian version of sumo wrestling, but with much more padding. Everything is staged and negotiated in advance; the contestants generally bear no ill will towards one another. Often, they have nothing but respect, and nod appreciatively when the “fight” is over.

When these goons square off, the crowd goes (in my mind) from being impassioned sports fans to being the equivalent of preteens at a WWE show, hooting and hollering that one graceless muscle head is wailing on another.

And in terms of diving - which is a pox on the game of soccer - in many cases the dive itself is an exaggerated response to an actual foul. Guys like Ronaldo (a notorious diver) are fouled constantly during a game. Diving is their way of showing the ref that a foul has occurred. It is simulation and it can ruin a soccer game (just try to make it through a game involving the Portugal national team or a La Liga match without getting angry at the nonsense), but at least it bears some relation to the idea of the sport.

If hockey fans think that goonery is part of what makes their sport special, than they should realize that it is also a major reason why it is a fringe sport in much of North america. But just wait - the response to an incident like the one the other night is nothing compared to what occurs whenever a player uses his stick as a weapon. There are writers and commentators here in Canada who have a knee-jerk defensiveness when ever their beloved game is criticized. And in that way, hockey IS like a religion. Many acolytes are so indoctrinated into the prevailing dogma that they can never admit that something is wrong with their sport.

And this ass-clown is the leading apologist.



From the Toronto Sun

Cherry said the next day outrage was predictable.

"All the anti-fighting people, they'll jump all over that one," he said. "I never, for sure, read the papers when there's a fight like that. They all jump on it. You know, 'it's terrible' and all that bologna."

The Hockey Night in Canada analyst, like most in the hockey community, is not blaming Orr for what happened.

"It was an accident ... George, he's a good guy and everything, but he was the guy that wanted to go with Orr," Cherry said.

A "good guy" whose job is to brawl with other "good guys"...

[Sabo]

Does anyone really give a shit what a badly upholstered couch thinks anyway?

[SportsDoc]

To me, it's the my goon vs. your goon fight that's not necessary. I have no problem when a player feels the need to protect himself against another player in the heat of battle. And I know it's hard to eliminate fighting completely.

My solution would be that after a players' 3rd fight in a given season, he would be suspended an increasing number of games for each following fight. Also, I would not allow the team to fill that roster spot during said suspension.

To go along with this, the league would have to strictly enforce instigator penalties to those players who try to draw a fight out of an opponent.

[degenerasian]

what about instigating fights after clean hits?

That seems to be a new phenomenon. Lupul vs Schenn last night.

[degenerasian]

should we just make this the NHL thread?

The Flames look like the 1979 Montreal Canadiens out there!

[degenerasian]

bah Flames turned into a pumpkin lost in the shootout.

However!

So Flames positives to take away from this game:
1) We CAN put the puck in the net
2) Flames have ONE POINT!!!
3) Oilers have ZERO POINTS

[Scottie]

Dig the new Sharks shirts.

And it is strangely reassuring to see that Patrick Roy has somehow become even more unhinged.

[rass]

Poor #84

[The Sybian]

Poor #84

That guy is fucking unhinged, never seen anything like that. #84 took 2 beatings, but I somewhat blame him for the first one. When a guy locks up with you and is throwing punches, you cant just turn away and ignore it. At a minimum, grab his arms or sleeves so he can't throw a punch. Tackle him and pin him down. I love how when his victims go down, he discards them like a curling stone. #15 is the one I feel sorry for. He is locked up with an opponent when the psycho grabs him and throws a punch. Europeans are such fucking pussies. 15 and 84 both played possum. I thought they were knocked out, but they popped right back up.

[BSF21]

Poor #84

He should be done forever and prosecuted. No reason for that.

[degenerasian]

What are the refs doing? Just grab the guy and take him off the ice.

[sancarlos]

I agree with the thread title. Staged goon v. goon fights are mostly gone in the NHL, thank gawd.

[Nonlinear FC]

http://www.foxsports.com/nhl/story/khl- ... eam-081816

Crazy KHL Dude - Done.

[BSF21]

Good.

2012 and he's never recorded a point. He's as much a hockey player as he is a figure skater. Fucker.