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thegerkin

Steve Yzerman wants Game Misconduct penalties for fighting

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I'm puzzled by people mentioning the Draper/Lemiuex and Lidstrom/Laperrierre hits. On both occasions we had fighters on the team., on both occasions they did nothing to prevent the hit occuring. No point circle jerking over Downey dropping the gloves when Lidstrom is already out injured. Clearly Downey failed as an enforcer.

Lemiuex was a dirty SOB his entire career and enforcers did nothing to stop his cheap-shotting.

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Cooke and Torres have a long history of cheapshotting players. All while fighting is still a part of the game. It's apparently not an effective enough deterrent for either one of them to stop cheapshotting. What finally got to Cooke's attention was a 17 game suspension from the league. The league's suspensions clearly haven't gotten Torres' attention yet, but neither has any enforcer.

I agree. Lost income is much better deterrent against cheap shots than fighting. That black eye will go away soon enough but losing nearly quarter of your annual paycheck got to hurt.

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I'm puzzled by people mentioning the Draper/Lemiuex and Lidstrom/Laperrierre hits. On both occasions we had fighters on the team., on both occasions they did nothing to prevent the hit occuring. No point circle jerking over Downey dropping the gloves when Lidstrom is already out injured. Clearly Downey failed as an enforcer.

Lemiuex was a dirty SOB his entire career and enforcers did nothing to stop his cheap-shotting.

Not true at all, it was a bounding moment for the whole team. Downeys job was to take care off business after the incident and he did a damn got job, that is wy enforcers are needed. Rats should have to answer for their crap ON THE ice if suspensions are coming on top of that fine.

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Not true at all, it was a bounding moment for the whole team. Downeys job was to take care off business after the incident and he did a damn got job, that is wy enforcers are needed. Rats should have to answer for their crap ON THE ice if suspensions are coming on top of that fine.

I really would not care all that much if a guy who just put Dats or Z out of commission for few week had to fight after the fact. A player I love to watch play hockey would be gone for a while and instead I got to see a fight between couple of guys who probably should not even be in the league anyway. Does not sound like a good deal at all.

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When was the last time you saw a sanctioned bare knuckle boxing match?

Er, as minor point here, boxing gloves and MMA gloves don't reduce brain trauma or damage to the head. In fact, they likely increase it. Gloves protect a fighter's hands, and let them punch much, much harder. I've never understood why hockey players drop their gloves to fight, other than that they may simply be too unwieldy to be useful in a fight.

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Again, hockey will still be hockey once fighting is inevitably banned.

The growth of MMA in the past few decades and the widespread intereest in watching guys like Mayweather fight suggests that combat sports are doing fine in N. America. I don't think there is anything inevitable about fighting being banned in hockey.

I'm in the middle on this issue. Fights are an entertaining part of the sport and growing up they've seemed integral to the game of hockey. However, plenty of tempers flair in other sports, such as basketball, and although fighting is heavily penalized, cheap shots don't seem more prevalent than in the NHL.

I like the suggestion that if players want it banned they work with the NHLPA to get it done.

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I'm puzzled by people mentioning the Draper/Lemiuex and Lidstrom/Laperrierre hits. On both occasions we had fighters on the team., on both occasions they did nothing to prevent the hit occuring. No point circle jerking over Downey dropping the gloves when Lidstrom is already out injured. Clearly Downey failed as an enforcer.

Lemiuex was a dirty SOB his entire career and enforcers did nothing to stop his cheap-shotting.

The argument of cheap shot prevention can't be proven either way. That is, we can't say there are more or less cheap shots with fighting because we don't know what would happen in the NHL if fighting were removed.

Paul Maurice, who has experience in both the NHL and KHL, had an interesting take on this yesterday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzArIIv_N6I

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You'd think that if fighting were to equal getting kicked out of the game that goons would become more prevalent than they are now.

If you want to get rid of a Pavel or Z, why send someone after them who could actually play? Why not send out the guy that plays four minutes and throws five punches?

Oh, heavens! That's it! Sammy can be our new enforcer! He plays games against players like Crosby- you know, guys with talent- if it looks like we're going to lose, we send him in gloves ablaze. He gets kicked out, and so does the guy with talent. He doesn't have to win fights; he just has to stay standing long enough to get the other guy kicked out! From Whipping Boy to Whooping Boy! I'm a genius!

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Agreed.

WorkingOvertime has a video up with Paul Maurice echoing the same sentiments.

BTW - how can we post videos up by not having to link them?

Yep- I watched the video and that made me think of having Sammy be our enforcer. Quite valid points he made.

As for posting, I'm not sure. Sometimes I get lucky and the video appears.

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If you take out fighting because it's dangerous soon you remove hitting, soon you make the puck lighter and soon you make the blades blunter and on it goes...Ice hockey is not a safe sport. It's played on ice for f***s sake. It'll never be safe. The topic of getting rid of fighting is boring and pointless. There are many far more dangerous aspects of the sport.

The players want it. Most of the fans want it. People who don't watch the sport and the media make a fuss because they're bored. f*** them all.

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To me this clip somewhat represents both sides of the argument.

Getting knocked out cold in no way deterred Matt Cooke from cheapshotting guys. On the flipside, it is satisfying watching him get a beatdown like that. But it was no deterrent.

Also, I'll pretty much use any excuse to post this clip because Cooke is such a dirtbag who shouldn't be in this league, even if he's "reformed."

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While what you're saying is true - I agree with everything you've posted so far...

Concussions also take place with clean hits, hits from behind, players losing an edge, and strike the boards etc etc...............

To be honest - as long as hockey remains a contact sport - a sport in which a player carries a weapon (stick) - there'll always be a significant risk for injury...There's just no way of getting around that.

So are you arguing that unless we can get rid of ALL risk in the game, we shouldn't try to remove ANY risks at all?

I don't normally log in and post, just read, but people, listen. Remember when Drapes got his face ran into the boards? You think McCarty WANTED to fight Lemieux before that? Nope. Fighting in hockey is the equalizer. You make a dirty play on the ice, you're going to have to answer the bell.

If you want to get rid of fighting, get rid of all the cheap dirty plays and the players who commit them. That's how you'll get rid of fighting,

Hockey is a sport where team mates look out for each other, that should never change, it's what makes hockey different from every other sport. You know when Lidstorm got ran into the boards, SOMEONE was going to come running to politely object.

No one fighting in hockey is out to injure another person. Evidence the other night in the Habs Leafs game. Parros was hurt, you could tell Colton wanted to immediately HELP his fellow hockey player, not punch him anymore.

Keep hockey hockey.

/rant

In those instances a fight would still happen, just when it was over McCarty would get a game misconduct. The fights that most people use to justify keeping it in the game would still happen. The game misconducts would get rid of enforcers though, who don't play more than 5 minutes a night and only fight other enforcers.

With the settlement that just happened in the NFL its inevitable that fighting will eventually be banned in Hockey. It doesn't matter how the players feel about it, if its going to cost the league hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in settlements/legal judgements, the league will just make the decision for them.

As many have tried to explain earlier, fighting is NOT part of the game, that would be like arguing slashing, cross checking or hitting from behind is part of the game.

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Repeated trauma to the head, even when no concussion is sustained, can lead to CTE.

When was the last time you saw a sanctioned bare knuckle boxing match?

And there's quite a bit of research going on that substantiates that. Here's one in particular that focused on high school football & hockey players: http://breakingmuscle.com/health-medicine/repeated-small-blows-not-concussion-could-be-the-real-danger-in-high-impact-sports

Edited by ogreslayer

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I'm with him, and I can accept that 95% of fans (or more) think that view is blasphemy and fighting is an essential part of the game. I disagree. I think the vast majority of fights in today's league do nothing to influence the game one way or another, have little/no motive behind them, and are entirely unnecessary. In short I think its a waste of time. Granted, there are fights that mean something; the battles the Wings had against the Avs meant something, and if the bad blood is there in high enough concentrations, I don't think even a game misconduct will prevent two players or teams from fighting. I do think game misconducts will remove the fluff from the ice, and likely remove goons who can't actually play hockey from the game as well, and I am for that. I realize this is a radical view and one that is drastically different from the philosophy that this league developed within over the past 50 years. I just think it is loony to place an event in a game that contributes very little to the overall team goal and has very little actual value over the well-being of an individual.

Sorry LGW for letting you down :(

I totally and wholeheartedly agree with you. Like you said, I understand that other people like it and enjoy it, but if it were removed from the game entirely.....wouldn't bother me none. Being able to land punches while standing on skates isn't a skill one needs to be successful at hockey, and is better suited to a new hybrid sport called "ice boxing." I'd rather watch some Datsyukian dekes than see two grown men pummel the sh*t out of each other at center ice.

I don't really care if that opinion sets me apart from other fans here; I'm not a Red Wings/general hockey fan in order to run with the herd. Sometimes I agree with the consensus, but this time I don't. Whether fighting stays or is legislated out completely, I'm still going to watch and root for the Wings, so it won't matter much to that end.

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Surprised that I haven't seen this here yet, read this one earlier this morning. Scotty Bowman weighed in, and defended (and helped clarify) Yzerman's comments:

Bowman said the league should poll players with their opinions of how to alter the rules surrounding fighting that are not in the fabric of the game — especially the so-called "staged fights" that feature two enforcers duking it out.

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"They had a survey in 2011-12 and 95 percent of the players said not to abolish fighting," Bowman said. "(The league has) to present more to the players, not abolish it as much as going forward with mandates that we think will work."

Among those, Bowman suggested, "maybe fighting has to stop when helmets are off" or "you give game misconducts for certain ones — you get the player out of the game."

Another option is quotas. If a player reaches a certain number of fights, he then is suspended.

"There have to be ways to tweak it," Bowman said.

Bowman said he doesn't envision a time when fighting is eliminated completely from the game.

"I don't think so, no," he said. "You might see rule changes that if you do fight under certain circumstances — without any rhyme or reason — you may not be able to stay in the game. That's what Yzerman was saying."

I find this argument hard to take issue with, especially with where its coming from. The question is...if some kind of rules are placed to limit but not abolish fighting, can the league actually pull it off?

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I'm puzzled by people mentioning the Draper/Lemiuex and Lidstrom/Laperrierre hits. On both occasions we had fighters on the team., on both occasions they did nothing to prevent the hit occuring. No point circle jerking over Downey dropping the gloves when Lidstrom is already out injured. Clearly Downey failed as an enforcer.

Lemiuex was a dirty SOB his entire career and enforcers did nothing to stop his cheap-shotting.

So getting rid of enforcers and fighting will lessen cheap shots and stick work?

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Unless I'm misreading the rules (and I just went back and re-read them), the officials can already give a game misconduct if they feel that it is warranted.

Plus there are all sorts of additional penalties- helmet, instigator, fight strap, third man in, leaving the bench, not clearing the area, continuing a fight, etc.- that if it's really a problem, they can throw one of those in as well, which adds to the number of penalty minutes.

Or am I wrong?

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I may be off base for saying this, but many of those who are in favor of eliminating fighting at the NHL level will quip..... "Well - does fighting prevent cheap shots?"

I think the obvious answer is no - fighting does not prevent all cheapshots, but it may make a few guys think twice about their actions - especially against certain opponents.

With that said, and you've already brought it up - will the elimination of fighting at the NHL see a significant reduction of cheap shots, and stick work?

Many of the anti-fighting crowd will have a tough time answering that one.

I have no difficulty answering that one. To ban fighting would not have an appreciable effect on the number of cheap shots. What it would do is drastically reduce the number of injuries and long term health effects that result from fighting. That should be enough to justify it when you consider that fighting is not a necessary element to the game itself. Cheap shots and egregious stick work could be reduced if guys were heavily sanctioned by the league for taking part in that stuff. As it is now, there is zero consistency and some of the pubishments are severely lacking.

I'm really having trouble understanding this notion that a violent person will be deterred by the threat of more violence.

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You'd think by some of these posts that we're in the '70's. Fighting has already been reduced significantly. With the percentage of Canadians in the NHL down to about 50% and more players going the NCAA route, it's probably going to continue to decrease.

Half the people here probably don't recall the bench clearing brawls. When they made the penalties harsh enough, they were eliminated. The same thing will happen with fighting. When you have all the players in helmets, visors and mouth guards, what is the point of it anyway?

It seems that there's a fight in a Wings game maybe every 8-10 games? Most of them aren't some enforcer gallantly defending a smaller, weaker, skilled team mate. How many times did Tootoo drop the gloves at the opening face off? That was about a personal grudge, not about his teammates.

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