Here is Beaulieau's spear to the nards on Chara yesterday also. Ouch.
I was half watching that garbage effort by the Habs last night, I never did see what Chara did to get Beaulieu so fired up. Was he channeling his inner Lucic?
And the constant ignoring of the relentless cross checks in the corner. When will this stop? When someone breaks their neck by going head first into the boards? Call the penalties, refs.
But hey, at least they acknowledged it's possible I was able to witness one...
Yeah obviously it's theoretically possible.
But considering how rare those events are, I think it's pretty unlikely one would go unnoticed and unremembered by people who actively try to track them.
Further than that, because of their obvious rarity and because you obviously can't know what you're actually talking about because you're too young to remember those days, it's ridiculous to suggest that "in the good days" things would have gone the way you suggested, which is a mid-game bench clearing brawl.
(Btw, here's the Calgary-Toronto brawl from 1996, as I'm sure some are curious. It's a post-game brawl.)
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So, the Wild - which has been a soft team since Boogaard left - doesn't react yesterday, which is basically what the league wants (to stamp out vigilante justice). Now it's up to the league to do their part.
We've all been around the NHL long enough to know the odds are they will not make a "line in the sand" statement. I'm guessing 5. Any more and I'll be pleasantly surprised. Any less and I'll be predictably disappointed.
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I really loved the 80's for the rough stuff - it brought another storyline into the game, and brought a tonne more emotion than what we see now. Part of me really misses those days just for that raw emotion, as there are simply too many games that I find rather sterile. You don't need fighting to make it emotional, but there is a huge downgrade in the emotion quotient in games these days. So, I am a guy who both watched and loved the 80's hockey.
Was there a lot of stick-swinging? Hell yeah. I would take an educated guess and say there was quite a lot more, in fact. Fighting didn't stop these incidents from happening, but fighting would almost always erupt afterwards. I am not sure someone can say that stickwork was lower back then. Retribution was way higher, that's for sure, but the incidents themselves were higher.
My take on the incident - Nyquist just got really 'crazy mad' and turned around with that anger, and 'bam'. You could see the look on his face and his body reaction after the incident. He barely even thought about protecting himself as guys came towards him. You can tell he instantly felt awful. I would be comfortable in a case like this - first time offender, instant 'guilty' feeling and concern shown - to lower it from 5 games. I could also see it being 10 - Spurgeon could have VERY easily lost an eye.
I think with Nyquist's body reaction, it was kind of difficult to start pummeling him at that point, especially in today's NHL. It is different had he immediately looked around and threw his gloves off when players were coming after him. He didn't even look like he cared to protect himself immediately after.
I just don't understand how someone could watch hockey back then and insist there was less stickwork because of the fighting. Hockey was way more violent in every way - fighting, stickwork, hitting and (unfortunately) sucker-punching, kicking and obvious intents to injure.
What did fighting provide back then on the ice? Well, the team with the better fighters usually went about their business with much more swagger. Just ask any old Oilers' alumni how it felt to come into the Dome before Tim Hunter arrived. To a man, the Flames put up a much better 'fight' in every aspect of the game, and those games were unbelievably emotional, and that is what made them super fun to watch. It wasn't necessarily because the fights were 'awesome' - it was the raw emotion that sucked you right into the game. You don't often get that any longer in the NHL, at least not at that level, and definitely not as regularly. Games are so sterile too often, devoid of any real emotion.
However, this type of stickwork? People forget how many 2-handed baseball bat swings would happen at times, or how badly players would spear one another. Even if you had the biggest and baddest goon in the league, there would be somebody on another team that would get mad (like Nyquist) and take a wild swing, or try to really hurt you. That was the 'ugly side' of the 80's.
I think it is all for show, however. This was never about player safety. They wanted it out of the game so it would be more socially acceptable, especially with the NHL's desire to make inroads in the US market and network TV. They greatly reduced the (what I like to call) 'obvious violence' (fighting, sucker-punches, intent to injure, etc) and replaced it with a much faster game where guys are just flying, and market the game as "The fastest game on ice", but now you are seeing a lot of guys out with concussions from big hits, even if they are 100% clean by the NHL's definition. Players are still getting hurt, but in a different way.
This is still violence. The result is the same as that of a fight.
The NHL is still morphing to a very sterile, NBA-like product. The NHL will be glorified shinny in the next 10 years or so by the looks of it. I used to buy that without having a fighter on your team, the 'rats' would take over (just like Burke said a thousand times). I am not so sure any longer. I think all violence is down - including these types of stick infractions. I just find that there is a lot less emotion in games now.
People used to say that the Battle of Alberta was boring because the Oilers were no good. While it is true that the Oilers were no good, I am starting to think it is really because the emotion component is missing. Those old games felt not only like playoff games, but basically game 7 of a Stanley Cup final. Your team just HAD to win, and it was easy to see players laying it all out there as if it was game 7 (well, with few exceptions anyways).
If you are going to argue about fighting, these are the points you bring up. Retaliatory stuff like this was much more commonplace back then, and fighting didn't discourage it at all. Skilled players did it, who didn't often have to 'answer the bell', but goons also did it as well. If anything, the goons of the last 10 or 15 years seemed to abide (more or less) to this 'code' which essentially kind of handcuffed them from policing, and didn't really engage in the 'dirty' stuff that they were often known for in the 80's.
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I was half watching that garbage effort by the Habs last night, I never did see what Chara did to get Beaulieu so fired up. Was he channeling his inner Lucic?
Lay a beat down on the lowly Habs.
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Captain James P. DeCOSTE, CD, 18 Sep 1993
But considering how rare those events are, I think it's pretty unlikely one would go unnoticed and unremembered by people who actively try to track them.
Further than that, because of their obvious rarity and because you obviously can't know what you're actually talking about because you're too young to remember those days, it's ridiculous to suggest that "in the good days" things would have gone the way you suggested, which is a mid-game bench clearing brawl.
(Btw, here's the Calgary-Toronto brawl from 1996, as I'm sure some are curious. It's a post-game brawl.)
Ok, but there have been instances beyond this in which players have left the bench, but was not a "bench clearing" brawl:
2001: Pronger was suspended without pay for one game after leaving the bench and instigating a fight with the Kings' Kelly Buchberger during an Oct. 11, 2000 game. Blues winger Pavol Demitra suffered a broken nose when Buchberger hit him with an elbow during the second period. That hit provoked Pronger to leave the bench.
Ok, maybe I exaggerated the once-a-season line brawl. But certainly there was more fights and usually involving the whole line. When we witnessed the Nyquist-Spurg scrum, there wasn't many fights. 20 years ago it would be 3 different matches taking place or maybe even 5 different matches. Maybe only a few guys comes off the bench. There was certainly more glove dropping over these events, which was the basis of my argument with the original rebuttal.
And I never once suggested that this event would have resulted in a line brawl.
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skilled player, playing for an Original Six team, other player not injured. It was never going to get the double digit suspension he would have deserved.
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