Fighting in ice hockey is undoubtedly the most controversial part of the sport, and often debated. But it’s also the most misunderstood.
Just as sports shorts only ever show car crashes in motor racing, it’s usually only the fights that gets a producers notice when ice hockey gets its five seconds of news covererage in Australia.
A knuckle sandwich isn’t exclusive to ice hockey.
It’s a regular event in ARL, NRL and in the rugby scrums. But there are two differences in ice hockey to the rest. Firstly, the men in stripes let them fight back, and secondly, it’s not treated with scorn.
Pugilists in hockey are penalised, and under international laws like those used in the Australian Ice Hockey League, you’re done for the rest of the game at least.
Despite what people see in the NHL, across the world, fights are actually uncommon or even rare.
If you are considered to be an instigator, you could miss 1-4 games extra. So why is it that in the vast majority of cases, AIHL games don’t end up as three-goon circuses?
Ice hockey considers two willing participants as being in the spirit of the contest.
Fights can get ugly at times, and as some teams have found, there’s a fine line between an entertaining scrap that gets the crowd cheering and a line brawl or cheap shot that disgusts sponsors and has fans leaving for good.
Aussies hate a bully, and the quickest way to turn your own fans against you is to have a bigger, meaner and angrier player monster a younger or much smaller and unwilling player.
The case for fighting in ice hockey really comes down to three things.
The release of aggression means less of the sneaky cheap shots; a fair scrap between two willing participants coupled with some good guy versus bad guy drama can raise the intensity of a dull game immensely (and the women love it more than the blokes).
And as the Australian team captain once said to me: “The beautiful thing about hockey is that you can leave it all out on the ice.”
Ultimately, the best case for fighting in hockey is that if you come for ten seconds of biff, you’ll see two hours of fantastic sports action.
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