Well, as my favorite league hangs by a thread as the owners and players bicker about how to best divvy up a $2.1 billion pie, I figured I'd do a crap/not crap poll on the subject.

Baseball seems to be the official sport of these forums, but how do the lads and lasses of Electrical.com feel about this wintry pasttime?

Not crap, but pretty meh.

Can anyone explain to me why fighting is allowed in hockey to the extent that it is? I've gotten three answers to this question, and none of them really make sense. You people are smart. What gives?

Without fighting, hockey is just a colder version of soccer...

Wouldn't soccer be fun to watch if fighting were allowed??

Not crap.

2nd Rick wrote:Without fighting, hockey is just a colder version of soccer...

Um... no.

Hockey skiils:
1) Ability to skate
2) Ability to ccontrol puck while skating
3) Ability to deke (faking or controlling the very well) while skating
4) Ability to fire a puck 90mph while skating
5) Ability to keep track of an object the size of a drink coaster when it's flying around a rink at roughly 30mph to 90

Soccer skills:
Ability to kick white and black ball around. Heading is an option.

These are the facts:

Hockey is fast. This is really cool. Hockey requires tool dexterity, shooting accuracy and athletic ability. All cool. Hockey players used to lose their teeth in support of their art. This is also cool. However:

Hockey is played in blouses and bloomers. This is totally a Victorian lady's swimming costume, and gae. Hockey is played on ice skates. So gaeee. Hockey players fight a lot, which would be cool, except that they are doing it on ice skates, and so they have no footing and cannot really land a punch. They end up lifting each other's blouses and slapping each other like strippers in high-heels fighting over a drunken lawyer's lapdance dibs. Not cool. Kinda gae. Hockey team names used to be really cool, like the Nordiques, the Whalers, etc. now there are the Avalanche, the Wild, the Coyotes, the Predators, Mighty Ducks, etc. Not as gae/retarded as the Utah Jazz (or the Washington Nationals of the National League), but still gae.

So, given the facts, I don't give a shit about hockey.

Hockey used to be by far my favorite sport, for reasons mentioned above. But since '94 when the Rangers won the cup they have pretty much SUCKED up the sport, making NY not so much a hockey town, without much press. As a result, my leanings have shifted towards the Knicks. While they also suck most of the time, it's a better kind of suck.

It's a good question about the fighting? But it's a great part of the game, and I like how there's proper etiquette to it... like you have to start the fight while play is on, or else it's a larger offence, you're not supposed to punch with gloves on, leave the bench, the refs give them a certain amount of time to fight, etc.

Here's a thought: hockey is a bit more physical than other sports, in the sense that body checking is allowed and part of the game, which extends to jabs, some stick chops, etc, all of which are allowed. You don't see this kind of contact in other sports... no one is really supposed to touch at all in baseball and basketball, and in football everyone has all these pads and helmets on, which doesn't lend itself to punching... in hockey it's easy to drop your gloves, and faces are exposed.

Favorite part of hockey-fights: the goalie battles... Being that goalies are on oppositte sides of the ice, how can they REALLY have any beef? Yet there seems to be a long-standing tradition of goalies skating across to fight each other. It's great.

NOT CRAP.

Not my favorite sport, but NOT CRAP. I used to frequent our local minor leagur team's matches when they played in town, but they now inexplicably play somewhere in Mississippi, despite the fact that they are Memphis' team. We have more sports arenas in this city than we know what to do with. WTF?

Linus Van Pelt wrote:Not crap, but pretty meh.

Can anyone explain to me why fighting is allowed in hockey to the extent that it is? I've gotten three answers to this question, and none of them really make sense. You people are smart. What gives?

Re: Fighting, the basic justification proponents give is that it keeps teams honest on the ice - it prevents the stickwork and cheap play MattPeterson alluded to from getting out of hand and allows teams to protect their star players. And sometimes when a team is getting creamed goalwise they'll start a donneybrook to save a little face in front of the fans.

I think it's a little phony because the "etiquette" or "code" that frames these justifications also says a player is supposed to let up on the other guy if the other guy looks like he's getting really hurt. Yes, goons are supposed to care for the other fighter's welfare while trying to teach him a lesson. Where's the deterrent if you know you're really not going to get your ass beat down when you drop the gloves? It's not there really. I've seen hundreds of games live and I can probably count on two hands the number of times I've seen a guy really get head handed to him. The rest of the time, like Steve noted, it's usually just a flurry of fists with no real connecting. Kinda gae.

Most fans like me enjoy seeing two cavemen chuck knuckles on the odd occasion but it's not the reason we love the sport. If fighting were banned, I wouldn't miss it much. There are some fans who are into the fighting hardcore but I've never understood that. The fights are only marginally more "real" than pro wrestling and they don't occur nearly as often as the sport's reputation would lead non-fans to believe.

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