Fighting - Part of the Game?
Published in March 2001 - Jeff Z. Klein & Karl-Eric Reif

Everybody likes "aggressiveness" in an NHL player -- everybody, that is, except the Massachusetts Board of Parole, and its reservations about what constitutes acceptable behaviour in hockey ought to make all fans of the game think hard about the sport we love.

We're talking here about Penguins forward Billy Tibbetts, who was paroled in 1999 after serving 37 months of a three-to-five-year sentence in the Bay State for sexual assault. On Jan. 27, Tibbetts sucker-punched Atlanta's Darcy Hordichuk while Hordichuk sat on the bench during a Pens-Thrashers game. The NHL handed the Penguins tough guy a four-game suspension for his overenthusiasm, which also landed Tibbetts in front of the parole board for a hearing. The board sanctioned Tibbetts but did not revoke his parole. But a board spokesman, Jim McCarthy, told reporters that the rookie was skating on a fine line. "He was in violation of the rules," McCarthy said. "Any further irresponsible behaviour could result in revocation."

But last week Tibbetts got into more trouble, kneeing Colorado's Dan Hinote, prompting the league to suspend him for one match. The parole board announced it would take no further action in the aftermath of that latest bit of gamesmanship, but its patience has to be wearing thin.

It's true that these actions were flagrant enough to get Tibbetts suspended by the NHL, but how much of a difference is there between punching someone on the bench and punching someone on the ice? And what's the difference between, on the one hand, a player fighting another player and, on the other, a player on parole for sexual assault fighting another player? In either case, not a whole lot. Are we to believe that such conduct is all right for an NHL'er, just as long as that NHL'er has no prior convictions for a violent crime?

That the Penguins employ an enforcer who has done time for sexual assault -- Tibbetts' rap sheet also includes incidents of assault on a police officer and assault with a dangerous weapon -- is a separate issue.  The problem at hand is that pro hockey on this continent prizes many of the same traits among its players as those possessed by violent criminals: a hair-trigger temper, an eagerness to fight, the belief that just about any slight can be remedied by punching someone's lights out.  Presumably, if Tibbetts gets into enough brawls, the Massachussetts board will revoke his parole and send him back to jail. But why the NHL, its players and coaches, and we as fans would find such on-ice behaviour accceptable and even admirable in any player other than Tibbetts is plainly unsupportable, logically or morally. Hockey does not have to be played that way, and in fact it isn't played that way in, say, the Czech Republic. And need we remind anyone out there that the Czechs are the current Olympic champions, world champions, two-time junior champions, and that the best players in the NHL today are Czechs -- not to mention Slovaks, Swedes, Finns, Russians, and others who learned the game in places where fighting is truly banned.

In North America, fighting is indeed part of the game, and it's undeniably fun to watch, we'll be the first to admit. But if it's wrong for Billy Tibbetts, a convicted violent criminal, to fight -- indeed, so wrong that it might get him sent back to jail -- then it's wrong for any player to fight.

Jeff Z. Klein and Karl-Eric Reif. Klein and Reif write for 'The New York Times' and 'The Village Voice' and are the authors of 'The Death of Hockey,' 'The Coolest Guys On Ice,' 'Original Six,' 'The All-New Hockey Compendium,' and other works. 

Copyright © 2001 -  "Above & Beyond Hockey" and Jeff Z. Klein & Karl-Eric Reif