Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
Itse's point here is that there is a big difference in what someone believes and what actually is. We are required—all of us—to form beliefs about everything every day. A great number of them align perfectly with reality, but a surprising number do not, and this is true of everyone, including NHL defensemen.
What Kris Russell believes is not necessarily the same thing as what actually happened. Russell clearly believes that Engelland's fight "changed the tide of the game." It might have, or it might not have. We can't know apart from developing a useful metric to systematically measure, analyse, and evaluate these events within a game. What Itse and others are getting at is that 1) there is not any evidence one way or the other to suggest that a fight will have any measurable impact on a hockey game. And 2) any impact that occurs in a hockey game that is attributed to a fight is inescapably an instance of unwarranted correlation without proof of causation. No one questions whether or not players believe in the affect of fighting—this is well established. There are some of us who raise legitimate questions about whether those beliefs are justified. Until there is corroborative, testable, repeatable evidence one way or the other, these remain unsubstantiated beliefs whether they belong to a player, a coach, an analyst, the Dalai Lama, or a fan.
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Actually, the only thing that matters is what Russell and rest of the Flames believe in this situation. And lets, for arguments sake say Russell's belief represents the belief of the rest of the team.
If they believe it turned the tied, it's likely because of the emotional reaction they felt to it during the game. While I agree, it doesn't mean previous fights in other games or future fights in upcoming games will have the same effect, if Russell is saying it worked the other night, it likely did. He has a pulse on what that did emotionally for the team in that moment, if it gave them momentum then it likely did, and in this case we saw the results on the ice to back it up, not only in visible play but also goals.
I'd say it's tough to argue that given the result on the ice, and the comments from Russell that in this case, the fight sparked the comeback. I agree on a holistic level, a correlation to fights and results could be made to see just how often the "fight" technique works.