Quote:
Originally Posted by zukes
Anyone notice that since fighting is down, stick-work is up? This was always the argument that the players made, yet all we're hearing is how equipment needs to get better.
I'm against the staged fights, but this is the kind of garbage that can be eliminated if you know that you have to face the music. Look at Dillon...he gives him a look and says something when Hoffman should have been picking up his teeth.
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I'm a proponent of fighting, but I don't think there is any correlation here.
There was a tonne of stickwork back in the day. I don't even think the McSorely - Brashear event was even all that bad (I still think McSorely was just trying to give him a 'tap', as it wasn't a 'home-run swing' at all, and didn't think it was an attempt to injure).
There have been some complete baseball-type swings in the height of the fighting era. I think if I am going to draw a correlation out of my butt, I would say that 'violence predisposes violence', if anything.
The more the NHL seems to crack down on the 'violent' aspect of the game, the less violence happens in a game, I find. Some of it is for the better, without question. Probably almost all of it. There is just something that I personally find missing from the games now personally. It isn't the 'bloodlust', but rather the 'raw emotion' that the game provided like none other.
However, I would venture to say that with the exception of the removal of the red line, the NHL has been a safer place with less violent infractions than ever before (at least, since I started watching in the early 80's).
