Statistically, I’m a great fighter.

In my 10-plus years of playing hockey, I’ve never lost a fight. When it came to going buckets and gloves, I won both times.

But despite my obvious physical dominance on the rink, I have to say I’d rather hockey cut the fighting.

Those interested or involved in the sport have no doubt been a part of this debate at some point or another, and even those who aren’t order cialis canada interested have probably read an article or two about concussions sustained by minor hockey players.

Though brain-damaging injuries are obviously serious, that aspect of the argument, for me, isn’t the strongest. What is more convincing are the considerations of how scrapping affects the game itself.

There have been many recent changes to gameplay, regulations, even things like dimension standards. The changes were primarily implemented to improve the speed and flow of the game, as well as hopefully the skillsets of players.

Changes like those made to dimension standards are easier to see the effects of than more subjective changes (for instance the severity of penalties). The newly-increased distance between the blue lines and the goal lines, making for a larger offensive/defensive zone, makes a difference in how often the puck leaves the zone. This way, there is less need for the offensive players to clear the zone, and fewer stoppages of play related with re-entry offsides.

Hockey is obviously taking pains to become the smooth, fast sport it should be, for as much of the game as possible. Given this aspiration, it seems silly to keep mucking around with scraps.

Instead of bench brawls, I’d rather see brawlers benched.

Fighting is an unnecessary disruption to gameplay that serves no purpose but to entertain spectators who mistook the hockey rink for a boxing ring. It distracts from and interrupts the parts of the game that matter. Shooting, passing, skating, making plays to score more goals because that’s how you win a game; not by throwing a few punches or pulling another person’s jersey over their head.

Additionally, fighting in hockey creates an unwarranted culture of violence within the sport and its spectators. There is no other game wherein players regularly fight outside the parameters of the sport. Football, notoriously rough, has huge amounts of physicality. Yet, it is not unusual to see a player helping an opponent up after a particularly nasty tackle. And the fans don’t seem to mind, given that the National Football League is the most profitable sports organization in North America.

Speaking as a puck-head, I know that the National Hockey League wouldn’t lose me as a fan, and I wager most of my ice-fiend friends wouldn’t stop watching either. There is significantly less fighting in hockey than there used to be, and the referees are making marked attempts to stop brawls before they break out. It’s just a matter of improving this trend until we cut fighting out entirely.

        @samwisegodfrey

By Rob Hardy

There are many ways to judge a society. This becomes an even tidier prospect if said society has their eggs in only a scant few baskets. And when we talk about in which baskets we put our eggs, this simply means examining where the majority of Canadians are focused, what they are thinking about, and the proportion of energy they put forth into certain activities.

Right now, we are in the midst of a nasty NHL lockout, one of which is threatening to eliminate an entire hockey season. Since our remotes might be getting some lighter use these days, this is about as good a time as any to give some pause as to just how the hell we spend our time. Far from approaching this from a moralistic point of view, it still might give us pause to step back and really see how crazy we might be getting about all of this.

Hockey has always been a huge part of the Canadian culture; something is always in the background whether in the off-season or on. Even those who don’t much care for sports know that The Maple Leafs are Toronto’s team and the Canadians are Montreal’s. Likely, most anyone would be able to point out the logos - symbols nearly as recognizable as the golden arches. For nearly a century, it is safe to say that the love of this sport has been inherently Canadian, and united most of the country in some strange way.

That being said, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing, when such a strong central focus is poured into what is really just a game played by ardent professionals. It’s understandable why hockey, or other sports in general, draw people in.  For some it’s a genuine love of the game, for others it’s keeping in that game as an active spectator when dreams of going pro finally die, and for nearly everyone who watches it’s just an easy past time.

What has been boggling the mind lately, however, is that this group of fans doesn’t amount to just a minor niche but is actually reflective of what has become an outright obsession nation-wide.  And while this may be perfectly normal for a segment of the population, hockey mania is likely one of the top concerns of the average Canadian, eclipsing even that of political discourse.

The hockey arena today is built with the most modern infrastructure, composed of high ceilings, icy colours and choirs of voices singing anthems with an unflinching seriousness rarely witnessed otherwise. The domain of Hockey Night in Canada has become a present-day cathedral, hyped to the highest proportions of both patriotism and consumerism. With a stagnant economy and massive layoffs, especially south of the border where many of the teams are, most games are nevertheless stunningly packed to the rafters by the unerringly faithful.

Especially with the rise of social media, everyone has an opinion on the current disaster that is ensuing. The thing is it’s a disaster for those involved, if you can even call it that. That’s not to say that athletes shouldn’t be recognized for putting themselves on the line and making their owners rich in the process. But how soon this dispute is settled doesn’t affect our own bottom line, so why do we care so much?  Why are Canadians more interested in job negotiations involving hockey players rather than public teachers, where lowering job standards have a much bigger impact on the average worker?

Like most guys, I would’ve loved to be playing pro sports like football, but when that doesn’t happen, life goes on. It may be exciting when your team wins or Canada gets the gold, but at the end of the day we have to realize we do not personally profit from this acclaim. The typical “armchair quarterback” can get distracted by what others are doing, worrying more about someone else’s stats than his own. Does it matter how good a hockey team is even as the average Canadian slips further into obesity, a disease fuelled by their own inactivity?

Most of us can’t be in the pros, but there are still a lot of chances to be active yourself and directly impact your life and community rather than simply vicariously watch others have fun or live life. It’s a sad, silent and woefully incorrect implication that as we get older we don’t need to bother cultivating our own athleticism and stay competitive. Perhaps, it’s this need that causes us to mistakenly plug into sport voyeurism, as we settle into the sedentary, complacent middle-class.

Some of the latest news has been that now beer sales have been suffering, too. Hopefully, this means that television viewership has also declined, leaving us to enjoy the great outdoors instead while putting some time aside for a more civic-minded life, at least until the puck finally drops again. We should remember that a healthy, vibrant country means not only a diverse citizenship, but a diversity of interests and activities - people actively working towards things such as social justice and preserving the halls of academia, lest we somehow slip back into some sort of  neo-dark age.