In this week's game between the Maple Leafs and Senators, I was left perplexed by one of the fights. In it, the Leaf's Frazer McLaren fought the Senator's Dave Dziurzynski. What was unusual was that it ended in a knockout; when McLaren connected with Dziurzynski's chin, the Senator fell flat on his face. He was revived, but had to leave the game with a concussion.
What surprised me was people's reaction: it was treated as a very sombre moment. Throughout the night, analysts mentioning the incident all seemed to say variations on, "you don't want to see that happen."
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I just don't understand hockey culture. I don't mean that in the sense of, "I don't understand how anyone could like that." I accept that people may want something different out of the sport than I do. But you need to at least have some logical consistency. Take Mixed Martial Arts for instance. I'm not a fan of it, but I at least understand where the fans are coming from. Some people like seeing violence and gore, so they go watch fights with few rules, violence and gore ensue, and the viewers rejoice.
But in hockey, people love the fights, yet they are aghast at the result of the fight. I'm left wondering what exactly hockey fighters were trying to accomplish by pounding each other in the head all these years. That seems to be a pattern in hockey culture: there's a razor-thin distinction between what is encouraged and what is condemned. Sometimes I feel sorry for the players who run afoul of these mysterious expectations.
Rather than get caught up in discussions of when and if fighting should be allowed, it would be more valuable for us to decide what exactly we want out of this game.
You would particularly enjoy Sean McIndoe's weekly NHL column on Grantland.com and his running feature "What Is the Hockey World Pretending to Be Outraged About Now?" (luckily, this doesn't overlap with his equally enigmatic feature "What Has Don Cherry Gone and Done Now?")
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