[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Split98

I'm not a big data guy, so I'm not sure what data would be out there

But I like one example for a couple of reasons


Johnny taking wacks on the wrist was a pretty frequent issue for Johnny, and unsurprisingly resulted in an injury - on purpose.

So in this I see a need for fighting (in this NHL), and the effects of not fighting or even threating anything physical

The best solution is properly officiating games and penalizing offenders properly. But it seems like we're miles away from seeing that. Watching that game was madness and it was clear that Johnny was getting hurt eventually - and we were waiting for it all year. No one on the Flames roster seemed upset that it was happening, and it seemed as if they wer tolerating the wacks until he ended up injured. It was insane, and something needed to be done about it.

This year we haven't seen much of it. Has the NHL been policing it properly? Or has Rinaldo and Lucic sitting on the bench altered the mindset of a player like Staal?

It seems pretty clearly to me the former. This video was made over three years ago, and Rinaldo and Lucic hadn't played a single game with Gaudreau since just this past fall. After that game in Minnesota in which Gaudreau had his finger broken, the Flames met with the League and they aired their grievances about it. I am supremely confident that if there was any dramatic change (I am not convinced there has been) it had everything to do with this, and nothing to do with the arrival of two on-ice enforcers three years later.

[I]...But is the option for someone to punch him or a teammate in the head a deterrent? Or is the NHL doing a better job? In the end, policing things properly deters the dangerous plays that prompt these responses in the first place. Fights for show or momentum should have gone decades ago. But I think 'allowing it' (it is penalized, and discouraged still) is improving safety in a primitive but unfortunately necessary way

I agree with what some are saying above, and I think we're just seeing the AHL a few years behind as players in that mould pass through. Your pure fighters don't have much of a place in the NHL anymore, and the AHL is the collection of junior players built to that mould and NHL players being pushed out. McGrattan getting KO'd as he toiled in the AHL also comes to mind.

So while you don't have pure fighters giving us impromptu mid-game boxing matches - Gio, Tkachuk, Rinaldo, Hamonic, etc occasionally fighting still feels necessary

The only reason anyone thinks it is necessary is because we have been steeped in a century-old culture that has enabled this aspect of the game to fester needlessly. The solution is to alter the way people think about the game, think within the game, and to drill in to everyone once and for all that fighting is just not acceptable in any non-life-threatening context.