Orr and McLaren and the NHL fighting debate: I really don’t know what to say

It’s easy to say, after the fact, that we are “horrified” when a player (as in the case of the young Ottawa player who fought Frazer MacLaren the other night) is seriously injured in a fight. Yet we all go back to waiting for the next time two players go toe-to-toe. 

I realize there is an element in all this that is simply human nature.  (It’s like "hitting from behind" in hockey.  No one wants to admit it is almost human nature to take advtange of someone in a game situation when they are “vulnerable”.  Heck, friends react that way when they're fooling around with one one another.  Can I get the upper hand on my buddy if I sneak up from behind?)  I remember cross-checking a guy from behind when I was playing a pick-up shinny game outdoors forty years ago.  I was maybe 20.  He was much bigger than me but that doesn't excuse the action on my part.  Unfortunately,  the temptation is always there to 'take advantange'.  You want that puck.

That is why it requires a major shift in attitude, a true culture re-adjustment, to get rid of that from our game.  Unless a serious punishment is handed out by the various hockey leagues with real consequences (other than the possibility of injuring someone else), it will continue.

While these kinds of things -fighting, hitting from behind, always seeking that 'edge', whatever-  seem to be in our “human nature”, it doesn’t mean we have to like it,  or that any of us should condone it.  And the NHL certainly shouldn't. 

When it comes to specifically to fighting, some folks do support it, however.  To be clear, I’ve never liked the concept of physical intimidation.  If two people want to have a fair go at it, one-on-one, based on some kind of built-up issue between them, perhaps that’s one thing.  I don't know.  But success in any field of endeavor—business, sports or life—based primarily on the ability to physically intimidate your opponent is, well, nauseating to me. (You’ll get a clearer sense of some of the reasons why by clicking on an earlier VLM post here.)

Look, as I’ve said here at VLM countless times, I enjoy physical hockey.  In fact, it is absolutely essential to success for any team.  You may not have to fight a lot, but you need to have guys who play hard.  Every team needs players who will work the boards, the corners and the front of both nets.  That’s the sport.  You have to be willing to take physical punishment and accept the reality of physical danger in hockey.  It’s a tough, violent sport.

Who have been some of my favourite players over the years (guys I may have hated, but liked the way they played, and wished they had been Leafs—or had been Leafs for a longer period of time)? Well, here are some of the names that come to mind: Bert Olmstead, Bob Pulford, right, Brian Spencer, Terry O’Reilly, Bob Nystrom, Bob Gainey and Brendan Shanahan. These guys all hit hard but usually “clean”, they finished their checks and if they had to defend their actions could fight as well. They were hard to play against but could also play the game.

But this business of being in the lineup solely because you can beat up the other guys is not for me.  The Flyers did that in in the ‘70s (yes, some of their guys scored goals, too, but I maintain that was mostly because the opposition was so frightened that players like Don Saleski and Dave Schutz skated around unfettered.  At least “Mad Dog” Kelly could skate and create havoc with his play and not just fight…) and they were hated—with good reason.  I recognize that the Flyers had some immense skill, too, in guys like Barber, MacLeish, Clarke and Leach, but their operating mantra was physical intimidation.  The “Big Bad Bruins” were very much that way in the '70s, too, though not quite to the degree of ‘thuggerry’ exhibited by the Broad Street Bullies.

Closer to home on the current Leaf team, Colton Orr and Frazer MacLaren represent, I’m sorry, something in hockey that apparently has to exist but I wish didn’t.  Nothing against them personally. In fact, both have obviously worked hard at trying to be "all around" players and both have certainly contributed to the team’s success this season.  (We can debate that impact, but I'd argue they deserve some credit, at least...)  They go to the net, work the corners, all things you’ve heard me say are important parts of the arsenal for many players who hope to survive and thrive in the NHL.

But we’re kidding ourselves if we think they are here because they can “play hockey”.  It’s just not so, at least as far as I can tell.  They are enforcers, there to fight and beat up the opposition—full stop.  If they were more than that, they surely would have played more than four minutes each against a good Pittsburgh team the other night,

You can trot out the old Conn Smythe line: “If you can’t beat them in the alley, you can’t beat them on the ice”, and I understand that thinking, sure.  There is, I recognize, a long history in hockey of accepting brutality because “it’s part of the game” and always has been.  Hockey is a battle, yes.

But c’mon, the current argument that guys don’t get hurt fighting is just not true. Guys do get hurt fighting.  It’s obvious.  One Senior A player died from the consequences of a fight a few years ago.  Countless guys suffer serious head trauma, not to mention other more “minor” injuries- the type that would send the rest of us to a hospital ward for a long time.

And yes, some lose their careers.

Am I writing today because of one “incident” against Ottawa the other night?  I suppose that’s a trigger, just like Marc Staal being hit in the eye with a puck resurrects the demand for visors for all players.

But the outcome of the MacLaren fight just reminds us that hockey, while a “game”, still has a lot of Neanderthal in our thinking.  And I mean a lot of us, not just a few people.  Don Cherry is right when he says “no one leaves the room” when a fight breaks out.

We can’t oppose fighting only when no one gets hurt.  These are mostly big men fighting each other because they feel they “have” to—to protect their own individual honour and that of their team and teammates.  I guess delivering a big-time open-ice hit is no longer an acceptable form of “retribution” in hockey.  Or can these players, like Orr and MacLaren, not manage that because they don’t have the actual skill required to do it?

I’m not just picking on our “fighters”. It’s obviously a league-wide phenomenon and has been for ages.

But does anyone think that when MacLaren asked the Ottawa kid to fight the other night, that there was a legitimate in-game reason for combat at that point in the contest?  Had the Ottawa player run one of our guys from behind?  Had the passion of the game spilled over into a natural, spur of the moment battle?

No.  MacLaren was simply doing what thugs do—asking for a fight because that’s what these guys typically do, then beating up someone because they can. And in the NHL, it is not only “legal” but embraced and applauded by the league, Cherry and all those who support fighting as “part of the game”. 

If we think that's not so, we're lying to ourselves.

I’ve never looked at myself as a pacifist.  But I'm hardly a tough guy and I realize we now live in a world of “Mixed Martial Arts”.  But man, we’ve made progress in so many parts of life over the last hundred years. All individuals being allowed to vote is one simple example.  It took a lot of "changing minds" to gain that basic human "right" for all.  (Can you imagine the prevailing "opinion" about that issue two hundred years ago.  Yet few if any challenged it?  Wow.)

We’re far from perfect now but we have progressed in terms of human rights, personal freedoms, democracy, the ability to express ourselves, understanding sexual orientation—it’s a long list.  We are aghast when freedoms are repressed, when free speech is hampered in any way.  We educate our children and society to ensure people make as informed decisions as possible about their health and well-being and the health and welfare of their children.  We don’t smoke like we used to, for example, because we know it's not healthy.  Some do and yes, that’s their choice.  No problem.

But we use our research, we use education, we use gentle suasion to try and make the world a little better, a little safer, a little healthier.

Football players, in the most violent sport in the world (football has its own issues, I realize) do not fight.  If they do, they’re tossed out of the game.  Do rugby players fight every night?  Ever?  I think that’s a pretty tough sport.  And they’re not brandishing sticks and wearing skates.  They're not "men"?

I used to go to a ton of Canadian college hockey games in the early 1970s.  It was outstanding hockey. Fast.  Great passing, tough play, spirited as all get out.  But never a fight.  It was still fabulous hockey.  When I worked around Junior hockey for a time in the early '80s, I loved a lot about that level of play, too.  The energy was fantastic.  But the copy-cat behaviour of young players trying to make the NHL through fighting (and almost none of them did- and what long-term damage did they do to themselves?) often left me cold.

Yet in professional hockey, it is our clarion call, It is part of what distinguishes us, sadly. It's seemingly what we want to "teach" our players.  That it takes being willing to "fight" to be a hockey player, a man.

I don’t know what I feel about rats  “ruining the game”.  I'm not on the ice.  But if they are ruining the  game and they're the reason we need to keep fighting around, then those "rats" should be dealt with severely by the NHL.  And then we’ll get rid of “rats”.

But in 2013, our best response is the same response we’ve had for decades?  Encourage two behemoths to grapple, because it entertains us?  And, supposedly, gives teammates a lift?

I'm among those who do feel the presence of Orr and MacLaren has given guys like Kadri more room out there.  But wouldn't we prefer that the "protection" come from guys who can play 15 minutes a night- every night?

Again, I’m all over the map because I don't really know what to say.  I know that, sometimes, a spirited bout, a “good fight”, seems to give a team a lift.  But what’s the human cost?  We only care, I guess, when our ex-enforcers start dropping dead (often taking their own life) and some critics attribute their death to the injuries they suffered relating to the demands of fighting as part of their "job".  We think, nod- and move on.  We’re sad for a few days, say kind things about them, then line up for the next go-round.

Does a big (tough, but clean) hit not achieve the same thing as a fight?   And isn’t that way more of a skill thing (skating, timing, etc.) than trading fists?  Doesn’t a big, clean, hit inspire a team? (Like the hit by van Riemsdyk on Malkin the other night.) 

That’s why, in part, we don’t have many fights in the payoffs.  Guys are pumped already. They don’t need phony “inspiration”.  And the first round of the playoffs, 16 teams battling for every inch of ice, is the best hockey we see all year.

I’m the first to say the Maple Leafs have to be able to “match up” against tough teams, like the Bruins.  But does that mean senseless fighting? Is that the only way the Leafs can play inspired, skilled, hockey—if we beat the hell out of someone first?

Do I want a tough team?  Of course.  Do I accept that, given the current state of the game and the “rules”, we need to be able to defend ourselves if “provoked”?  Absolutely.  Mark Fraser and McQuaid fighting in Boston.  That seemed within the context of the game.  I can handle that.

But to do this night after night, two minutes into a game, with no real reason and no provocation?  I just don’t know.  If that’s really the only way the Leafs (or the NHL) can be successful in this day and age, I wonder.

I'm conflicted. I admit that.  Again, I’m an old-timer.  I saw some of the “baddest asses” in hockey in person.  John Ferguson, Orland Kurtenbach.  Reggie Fleming.  I realize fighting was big back then too. But those guys could play and take regular shifts every night.  Ferguson helped Montreal win Cups.  Fleming scored 20 goals in the old six-team NHL.  (By the end of his long career Fleming was one-dimensional, yes, but my question is: where was the support for players like him to adjust to life after hockey?)  Kurtenbach was a team captain.

But the kind of stuff we’re seeing now?  Constant staged fights, seconds into a game or of a shift, when no one has even hit one another beforehand?

C’mon.

We’ve gone to great lengths over the past ten years—symposiums, think tanks, everything short of a Royal Commission on hockey whenever we lose a major International event or a player gets a concussion—to educate ourselves and to eradicate things like hitting from behind and head shots.

Yet we encourage guys to stand on skates and whale away at each other, for no earthly reason much of the time other than “I’m a fighter, and that’s what I do to get my team started”.  And we try to rationalize by saying, “but they play the game, too.  They don’t just fight…”

Really?  Bob Gainey played four minutes a night? Bob Nyrstrom?  Terry O'Reilly?  Those guys played the game.

Are we barbarians (and I'm including myself here)?  We’ve learned nothing in fifty years?

So here's my "solution":  at the very least,  the NHL should ban this senseless un-provoked, ‘staged’ fighting.  Everyone (except Cherry, if I understood him this past Saturday night) claims they’re against it, so just get rid of it.

If two guys drop the gloves within seconds of a game or a shift, boot them out.  Don’t analyze it.  Kick them out.  And the coach, too. And for the next game as well.

Then, we would eventually get back to more old-time fighting (if we have to have it), when there was at least a semi-legitimate, passion-fueled reason for dropping the gloves.

By all means have your say.  A lot of us will likely disagree on this one, and we all have a right to our own views.  Let me know what you think.