By Rachel Puglia
Elm Staff Writer
The National Hockey League, like any other athletic organization, has a rulebook. However, it has one rule that is generally frowned upon in other sports: fighting. Unlike other sports, in hockey fighting is allowed—well, sort of.
Ice hockey is an extremely physical sport. You can’t watch a hockey game without seeing a lot of hitting, bumping, and nudging. Some of the physical gestures go without any penalty, but if the players drop their gloves and throw punches, the linesmen and officials are going to step in.
There are two forms of punishment in the NHL: minor penalties and major penalties. There are fines and ejections for serious stuff, but during games players receive major or minor penalties. According to the NHL Rulebook on NHL.com, if a minor penalty is called, “any player, other than a goalkeeper, shall be ruled off the ice for two (2) minutes during which time no substitute shall be permitted.”
Players get sent to the penalty box, otherwise known as “the sin bin,” for things like boarding, cross-checking, delay of game, goalkeeper interference, high-sticking, holding, hooking, roughing, slashing, and tripping.
When players really misbehave, they can receive major penalties in which “the offender, except the goalkeeper, shall be ruled off the ice for five (5) minutes during which time no substitute shall be permitted.” Players receive five minute majors for things like dangerous boarding, charging, checking from behind, fighting, and illegal check to the head.
Fighting in the NHL is defined as “at least one player (or goalkeeper) punches or attempts to punch an opponent repeatedly or when two players wrestle in such a manner as to make it difficult for the Linesmen to intervene and separate the combatants.” Generally, when players throw a few punches they get put in the penalty box for two minutes to calm down.
However, some refs give guys majors especially if it is a very physical game.
I was watching the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Philadelphia Flyers playing a little hockey between fights this past Sunday. This NHL rivalry is equivalent to the Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers rivalry in the NFL.
The only difference is the Flyers are allowed to throw punches at the Penguins when they are angry. In the first period of Sunday’s game, three players were ejected from the game due to fighting penalties, two Penguins and one Flyer. The third period of the game was when the real excitement began.
There was a huge brawl in the last five minutes of the game that resulted in one Flyer being sent to the locker room and two Penguins to the box, and the Flyers went on a two minute Power Play. There were a lot of different physical confrontations during the game, but only one resulted in hair-pulling.
Yes, I said it; grown men were pulling each other’s hair. When the Stanley Cup is on the line, players are going to get physical. I understand that ice hockey is a physical game, but where do we cross the line into unnecessary roughness?
There is a difference between defending your teammate when he gets checked really hard by the opponent, or a guy tries to trip you so you punch him, but the amount of fighting in Sunday’s game was over the top. The fight in the first period took a good five minutes to break up, and the fight in the third period took at least 10 minutes just to get the players to go over to their designated benches. Sunday’s game looked more like a wrestling match than a hockey game.
One of the beer commercials that is shown during hockey games says, “Hockey fans aren’t like other fans,” and I think they are definitely on to something there. Hockey fans say that fighting is what makes the sport unique and more exciting than any other game. Fans like to see fights during hockey games, but maybe not to the same extent as we saw on Sunday.
During Sunday’s game, two players threw their gloves off and put their fists up ready to fight. Then we heard three dings as if we were at a wrestling match. The two players went at it, fist-to-fist, for a few minutes until the linesmen were able to interject and separate the fighters.
I’m not going to lie; I like to watch some fists thrown around, and if I was sitting behind the glass I would probably be banging on it too, but there needs to be a limit. Sunday’s game was full of dangerous hits and violent showdowns right from the beginning of the game. I think the amount of fighting that I saw on Sunday was unsportsmanlike behavior.
There are players in the NHL who are known for getting into big fights, and there are players that are known for being able to stay out the battles. I respect the guys that are able to keep out of the fighting spectrum of hockey. They are getting paid to win games and put on a good show, but the show doesn’t need to make the game run half an hour longer than expected because they had to keep stopping to throw players out of the game.
Sunday’s playoff game, I think, crossed the line. Fighting does keep the game of hockey unique from any other sport and adds excitement, but we need to draw a line. I wanted to watch the Penguins and the Flyers play ice hockey, not a boxing match between guys dressed as hockey players.