Still Fighting It

As the third round of the NHL playoffs get underway tonight with the Bruins taking on the Tampa Bay Lightning, the hockey world is reeling from the news yesterday that NY Rangers forward Derek Boogaard was found dead in his Minneapolis apartment. He was only 28, and no cause of death has been released by the authorities. Boogaard was the pre-eminent enforcer in the league, a 6' 8" beast of a man whose main role in the NHL was to fight. From all accounts, Boogaard was beloved by teammates and friends off the ice, but on the ice, he was feared.

For non-hockey fans, the whole concept of an enforcer, also referred to as a "goon," is alien. Indeed, the fact that hockey players are allowed to fight each other at all is problematic for many. For hockey purists, fighting's been a part of the game as long as skating or shooting the puck has. The role of the hockey enforcer has traditionally been to protect the more skilled players on the team. A player like Wayne Gretzky, arguably the best player in hockey history, almost always had an enforcer like Dave Semenko or Marty McSorley on the ice at the same time in case an opponent had the audacity to lay a nasty hit on him.

In addition, a player might initiate a fight to fire his team up. You might see this happen if a team falls behind by a couple of goals; a fight might serve to motivate the team to skate harder and if it's a home game, might get the fans roaring again. In the playoffs, fighting rarely occurs. Unless the game is a blowout, teams don't want to risk a major penalty (players receive 5 minutes for fighting as opposed to 2 minutes for a minor infraction like tripping or hooking) in a close game. So unless a player can contribute in other ways than fighting, you're not going to see him on the ice much or at all in a playoff game.

The image of hockey fighting is very overblown these days. There are some folks who think that it constitutes the majority of action in a game, but there is very little fighting compared to the past. In the 1980s, there was an average of more than 1.0 hockey fights per NHL game; in the 2009-2010 season, that figure had dropped to .58 per game. One reason is the game's faster than ever before. Having so-called thugs on the ice can hurt more than help teams.

Fighting's been in the NHL since the beginning, but things really took on a Wild West atmosphere in the 1970s, when the Philadelphia Flyers used a violent brawling style to win their way to two consecutive Stanley Cups. The teams had plenty of skilled players like Bobby Clarke, Bill Barber, Reggie Leach and goalie Bernie Parent, but it was the rough play of Dave "The Hammer" Schultz, Bob "Hound Dog" Kelly, Andre "Moose" Dupont and others that set the tone for the Flyers' dominance. As a young Toronto Maple Leafs fan, I watched a couple of bloody playoff series between the Leafs and the Flyers, full of bench-clearing brawls and other ridiculousness. It was no coincidence that in 1977, the NHL instituted rules banning the third man in (meaning anyone who tried to join a fight already in progress) and anyone leaving the bench to join a fight. And of course, the great movie "Slap Shot" chronicled the brawling antics of a minor league hockey team (and based on actual events, sort of).

Former NHL coach and current commentator Don Cherry has been an outspoken proponent of fighting, including it in his popular "Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em" series of highlight tapes and featuring fights on his "Coach's Corner" segment on Hockey Night in Canada. Sites like HockeyFights.com feature video clips of every NHL fight and rate them; and YouTube is chock full of old footage of hockey fights. Opponents of fighting point to the success of international events like the Olympic hockey tournament and college hockey, which both eject anyone who fights. And of course, the 2009 death of junior hockey player Don Sanderson after his head hit the ice during a fight renewed the debate over fighting again.

I've been watching hockey for nearly 40 years now and I'll admit that I enjoy watching a good scrap every now and then. In the heat of a game, when a fight spontaneously breaks out, it can be fun to watch. But when two meatheads just decide to drop the gloves for no reason, it's pretty pointless. I don't miss the days of the bench-clearing brawl.

Still, the tale of the hockey enforcer is an interesting one, and Hollywood's paying attention. A full 36 years after "Slap Shot," there are two movies in the works about hockey fighters: the Kevin Smith-penned and directed "Hit Somebody" (based on the Warren Zevon song) and "Goon," written by Jay Baruchel of "Undeclared" and "Tropic Thunder" fame.

So do guys like Derek Boogaard have a place in the game? Right now, I'd say yes, but I also enjoy the aforementioned Olympic and college games when it's all about speed and skating and hard hits as well. It seems as though enforcers have a smaller role. And if fighting does end up being legislated out of the game, I won't be heartbroken but I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't miss it.