Why We Fight - Article by Brandon Prust

[crapshoot]

Originally Posted by kingkahuna

And the beauties:
"Even just by turning down a fight, the rats lose momentum for their team" - by staying out of the box and ahead on the scoreboard?
It didn't work very well when there were arguably a few rats on the Canucks a few years ago in the Cup final who turned the momentum in that series in a big way. I'm sure the refs notice it as well.

"what happens when the rest of the league sees that hit and we don’t do anything about it" - probably nothing.
Do the same thing again in a big game?

But what people seemingly fail to grasp is that it's gonna keep on happening, because THAT is part of the game. Enforcers do not prevent things from happening on the ice. "Answering the bell" does not prevent anything from happening in the next game.

How many players have been shamed and put in their place by getting beat by Brandon Prust and never did anything violent to anyone on the ice ever again? Yeah. On the contrary I bet most of the players who "answered the bell" are pretty pumped themselves afterwards. There is still a Matt Cooke in the league mind you, and he's been surrounded by fighters his whole career, and he only got "better" when called out by EVERYONE.

It's a silly narrative, and of course Prust is going to bang that drum to legitimize his role. It would be strange if he didn't.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

Except that is not what Prust said at all. He was trying to create energy with a big hit, and admitted that he threw the hit late, but at no point did he say that hitting a player late or causing an injury was his mentality or intention.

That's a pretty absolute conclusion you draw from a fairly ambiguous admission by Prust.

I don't know. If he knew the hit was late, it seems to me that he was also intent on carrying through with a late hit. It seems pretty likely that he knew that by coming in on a late hit that the opposing player was not anticipating, and by "finishing [his] check hard" that he was also going to hurt the player. How can you outright dismiss his intent from this report? Especially after he admits to entertaining thoughts about running the other team's goalie and punching him in the head.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Brandon Prust

" If they take fighting out, and guys aren’t worried about answering the bell, I guarantee more people will get hurt from an increase in open-ice body checks.

How do I know for a fact? Because I think about it myself all the time as an enforcer. If I know there’s a guy on the other team who might kick my ass at any second, I’m thinking twice about taking a guy’s head off going across the middle."

I think this is one of the more compelling reasons I have seen to support the necessary place of fighting in hockey, but it is still far from an unassailable point. Most notably, this is just one player: I'm far from convinced that every tough guy, enforcer, or agitator processes the game the same way as Prust. In fact, I would say that there is more than enough compelling evidence to suggest that there are plenty of players in the NHL who don't worry about getting beat up because of a dirty play.

Originally Posted by Brandon Prust

"The NHL needs fighting to keep the game safe.

"It sounds like an oxymoron, but let me explain how it works.

"We were playing Anaheim about a month ago when something happened that has become all-too-common in the NHL. It was the third period and one of our best players, Max Pacioretty, got smoked from behind after making a pass and went head-first into the glass. He hurt his back and had to be taken to the hospital. The referee didn’t think it was a penalty, and in fairness to him, maybe it wasn’t one if you go by the book...

"I couldn’t let it go. I went after the player who hit him and tried to get my fight. Now, I’m not a guy to chirp a lot. I mean, I’ll tell guys to shut the eff up and all that, but I’m not one to go after guys’ feelings and whatnot. My thing is, if you want to go, you want to go. There’s no point in making fun of each other’s moms out here. We can settle it a certain way. Luckily, I got my fight that night. I had to let the league know you can’t take runs at our best players."

So, in what way did Prust's actions in this game AT ALL contribute to "keeping the game safe"? Pacioretty still got hurt, and the Canadiens still lost the game. This is a pretty meaningless demonstration of his point that doesn't do anything to support the connection between fighting and the reduction of player injuries from reckless play.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by kingkahuna

"Even just by turning down a fight, the rats lose momentum for their team" - by staying out of the box and ahead on the scoreboard?
It didn't work very well when there were arguably a few rats on the Canucks a few years ago in the Cup final who turned the momentum in that series in a big way. I'm sure the refs notice it as well.

That's a pretty big assumption. From what I recall, the Canucks lost that series because their scoring dried up, their goalie's confidence was shattered, and they couldn't score a power play goal to save their life.

Originally Posted by kingkahuna

"what happens when the rest of the league sees that hit and we don’t do anything about it" - probably nothing.
Do the same thing again in a big game?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Would it prevent the same thing from happening again in a big game? I don't see how or why. After all, Prust admits himself in the article that in the really big games, players are pretty intent to do whatever it takes to win—consequences be damned.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Hanna Sniper

...The enforcer roles isn't done till fighting has been eliminated from the game, right now the way the rules have been structured has handcuffed what once was...

Well, I guess this hinges on an accepted definition, but it seems pretty widely accepted that a "hockey enforcer" is a player who has a single skill-set that holds his place on the team, at the expense of his inability to play the game at the NHL level. An enforcer is a player who receives ice time because he fights. An enforcer is a player who when not fighting, is virtually entirely ineffective or detrimental to his team's success.

There are fighters in the NHL who can also play the game. I don't think anyone would consider them "enforcers." While I agree that there will likely always be fighters in the game—barring an outright ban on fighting, I think it is fairly abundantly clear that the enforcer's role (according to the definition I provided above) is presently obsolete, and not likely to be reprised.

[Flames89]

Great article. Thanks for sharing. I agree with all his points, and frankly can not conceive how anyone would want fighting out of this game (though understand the enforcer era is no longer necessary).

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Flames89

Great article. Thanks for sharing. I agree with all his points, and frankly can not conceive how anyone would want fighting out of this game (though understand the enforcer era is no longer necessary).

* Serious safety concerns
· Distracts from the action within the game
· Disrupts the flow of games
· Generally barbaric

The first point is enough for many people. Nevertheless, despite its general popularity among hockey fans, not everyone finds blood sports appealing or in any way entertaining (present company included).

[Itse]

Only just read the article and I kinda have to agree with Saillias. Prusts logic just doesn't hold up. Prust looking for a fight turned out to be the reason for a dirty hit, which ended up being an injury. How exactly is he helping prevent injuries again?

(Obviously he never intended to injure, but I'm thinking most "rats" don't actually think they're looking for injuries either. They just keep happening as a part of the way they play.)

[Tinordi]

The self serving logic is stupefying in its lack of awareness.

For this line of argument to hold any water at all, you would need to demonstrate that the days of fighting and enforcers had a measurable impact on the amount of cheap shots or "rats" active in the game.

Infact, I'm almost certain you will find that the days of heavy fighting were also the days of incredible cheap shots and cheap shot artists.

Fighting is down to historic lows in the game and I think you would find that cheap shots are also down to historic lows as well.

Please stop repeating this argument unless you bring actual evidence to the table.

[PeteMoss]

What are the odds that any of these articles on this website are written by these athletes? I'm sure they give a couple of points, get asked a few questions and someone ghost writes all these articles.

[cDnStealth]

That was an interesting read. I enjoy a good hockey fight but do enforcers really keep other players honest? I don't know if that is true anymore. I think if the league wanted to make the game safer they'd dish out much stricter punishments for player infractions. Maybe a player would think twice about running a guy if it meant he'd be suspended for half a season or more.

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

That's a pretty absolute conclusion you draw from a fairly ambiguous admission by Prust.

I don't know. If he knew the hit was late, it seems to me that he was also intent on carrying through with a late hit. It seems pretty likely that he knew that by coming in on a late hit that the opposing player was not anticipating, and by "finishing [his] check hard" that he was also going to hurt the player. How can you outright dismiss his intent from this report? Especially after he admits to entertaining thoughts about running the other team's goalie and punching him in the head.

Oh please. If you are going to give yourself the ability to look back in hindsight, give Prust the same right to do so as well.

[Erick Estrada]

I've actually lost a lot of respect for Prust over the years. At his peak with the Rangers he was everything you could want in a role player with his effort and energy he brought to the game but since he signed that deal with the Habs he's been nothing but a cheapshot artist, mouthpiece, and whiner. I'll take a player like Bouma who does the same good things on the ice minus the cheap shots and big mouth anytime.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by PeteMoss

What are the odds that any of these articles on this website are written by these athletes? I'm sure they give a couple of points, get asked a few questions and someone ghost writes all these articles.

The articles that I have read have definitely benefitted from assistance by a professional writer, but all of them also bear traits of having been written by amateurs. I think they are only controlled for grammar and structure. In all the ones that I have read, the athletes' voices are fairly clearly heard.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

Oh please. If you are going to give yourself the ability to look back in hindsight, give Prust the same right to do so as well.

What?

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

What?

You don't actually think that in the months since that hit that Prust could not have looked back and gone "aww crap, that was a late hit"?

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

You don't actually think that in the months since that hit that Prust could not have looked back and gone "aww crap, that was a late hit"?

Sure. You don't actually think that in the heat of the moment Prust actually deliberately hit Stepan even knowing that he was coming in late?

[Resolute 14]

We're not talking about a James Neal here. So no, I do not think Prust intended to hit him late. And that is what I took from Prust's own comments.

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

The self serving logic is stupefying in its lack of awareness.

For this line of argument to hold any water at all, you would need to demonstrate that the days of fighting and enforcers had a measurable impact on the amount of cheap shots or "rats" active in the game.

Infact, I'm almost certain you will find that the days of heavy fighting were also the days of incredible cheap shots and cheap shot artists.

Fighting is down to historic lows in the game and I think you would find that cheap shots are also down to historic lows as well.

Please stop repeating this argument unless you bring actual evidence to the table.

Oh, please do follow your own advice and bring actual evidence of the two statements that you are "almost certain" about. You may be right, but lets see if you are going to back something up for once, or if this is just going to be yet another typical Tinordi self-serving drive-by.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

We're not talking about a James Neal here. So no, I do not think Prust intended to hit him late. And that is what I took from Prust's own comments.

Fine. When Prust said "I knew it was a late hit," I took him to mean that he knew it was a late hit when it happened. But maybe that's just me.

I don't have a problem with your interpretation of his report of the events. What I have a problem with is your insistence about his mentality or intent.