Although most of these type of brawls occur in the NHL, sometimes they occur in other leagues as well. In fact, the even appear in inline hockey game. Recently one of the Slippery Rock inline hockey tier 3 teams squared off against La Roche College. The game was competitive until the end of the second period. It was during this time La Roche pulled out to a big lead, and thats when everything went down hill. The game became very physical and penalties were given to both teams, however Slippery Rock always seemed to be the one getting called for penalties the most. At one point Slippery Rock had 4 people in the penalty box at one time. (This isn't even the worse of it yet.)
The worse came when their was a face off with about 1 minute left in the game. La Roche one the face off and when their player touched the puck, one of the Slippery Rock players decked the kid to the ground. This started the mele, and soon after all of the players that were on the rink surface started throwing punches and tackling each other.
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| SRU takes down La Roche |
Thankfully the NHL and lesser leagues are trying to cut down on the amount of out of control melees that occur in their leagues. The only people that enjoy watching these are generally "fake fans" of hockey, who have no idea of what is actually going on during the game. Most NHL fights serve a purpose, but brawls like this in every league and every variation of the sport give hockey a bad name. Fighting should never be outlawed as it is integral to on ice safety, but any player who acts like Ron Artest (ex: Gillies, Avery) in the course of any game should receive harsh punishment as they essentially slander the name of hockey and falsely portray such a great sport.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you brawls like this should not be part of the game. Fights sometimes have to occur if a star gets cheap shotted or to spark a team up a bit. But those players that you named take it way out of proportion and shouldn't be in the league if they are as cheap as they play.
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