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Nothing draws ire in hockey circles like a discussion about fighting.  My last article here at HockeyZonePlus, entitled “Fightin’ Mad”, drew more e-mail responses than all of my previous articles combined.  These responses generally had two things in common: they strongly disagreed with what I had written, and most, rather than addressing what I wrote, were simply attacks upon me as a person.

So I thought I’d take this opportunity to do two things.  One, I’d like to expand on and perhaps clarify my thoughts about fighting in hockey.  And more importantly, I’d like to demonstrate how NOT to make a logical argument, using some of the responses I received as examples.

First, to the insults.  One of the best ways to know you’re winning an argument is when your opponent stops attacking what you’re saying, and starts attacking you.  That being said, here are some comments:

 “How you can come to such a conclusion only shows your ignorance of this wonderful   game.”

 “A true follower of the game will find what you wrote to be nothing more than    uneducated drivel.”

 “...you make such asinine comments about a game that you obviously don’t know enough about to make.”

 - G.H.

I submit that I am a very knowledgeable and educated hockey fan.  I will not specify my “qualifications”, so to speak, just as G.H. does not specify his.  I will instead allow my body of work to stand on its own.  The point is that people like G.H. will apparently assume that anyone who does not share their opinion simple does not know as much as they do, no matter what the evidence may indicate to the contrary.

“Since you were born in 76 [1976], you have no idea what REAL Hockey [sic] is.”

 - M.F.

M.F. later clarified his statement, noting that “...[he] used to go to the Boston Garden back when it ‘Was a game’ in the 70’s...”.  Again, M.F.seems to assume that since he has been a hockey fan longer than I have, he must be more knowledgeable about the game.  He provided no evidence for this assertion.

M.F. also makes one of the most common assertions made about hockey, indeed most sports.  For close to 100 years, people have remarked that hockey in “their day” was better than hockey “now” (whenever “now” happens to be).  I have personally seen quotes in newspapers dating as far back as 1905 or so, with retired players commenting about how poor the next generation of players were.  There has never been any evidence of this and there never will be.  It is inherently untestable, and is merely opinion based upon personal preferences.

Now, let’s move on to some comments that were probably intended to be constructive criticism, rather than simply personal attacks.

“...since the instigator rule was instituted serious injuries and injuries caused by sticks have increased greatly.”

                                                                                    - P.
(no last name given, original message typed in all caps)

This is another commonly-parroted argument.  Allowing fighting eliminates cheap shots, or so the logic goes.  There are problems with this, of course.  For one thing, I have never seen a shred of empirical evidence to support this assertion.  All evidence presented is anecdotal, which makes it of very dubious reliability.

This argument is what Ken Dryden (who I would wager knows something about the game) calls the drive/discharge theory.  Here’s what Jeff Klein and Karl-Eric Reif have to say about it in their book, The Death of Hockey:

“Of course this theory, based on long-discredited Freudian notions on the therapeutic value of catharsis, is inane.  As Dryden pointed out even then [in 1983], psychologists had  long known that behaviour repeated is behaviour learned, and acting out violence, therefore, only breeds the acting out of more violence.”

Fighting only leads to more fighting.  I have seen no empirical evidence that it reduces injuries.  In short, there seems to be very little to support this argument.

Other responses I received can be discredited immediately.

“...it is easier to understand it [fighting in hockey] by having played the games somewhat above the house league level.  Even the pacifist Gretzky  (see McSorely [sic]) understands this.”

                                     - P.

Well, here’s an actual quote from Gretzky, taken from Ken Dryden and Roy McGregor’s book Home Game: 

“We have such a poor image in California and the United States, just because we allow fighting.  We don’t need it any more.”

So P.'s argument is factually incorrect.  Gretzky clearly does not believe that fighting is an inherent part of the game.  He seems to be saying that allowing fighting in the game is a matter of choice, not that it’s part of the game.  I would agree.

(Gretzky's quote is from 1992. It has been brought to my attention that Gretzky has since rescinded this position, as recently as 2001. But I feel it is still worth noting that an NHL player of his calibre, after a dozen years in the league, thought fighting not worth keeping. Perhaps his new position with the Coyotes has changed his mind.)

 “...the loudest booing ever heard at the Winnipeg Arena was in 1991, when it was announced that Shawn Cronin ‘The Barbarian’ wasn’t dressed for the home opener.”

- W.D.

This is an example of purely anecdotal (and therefore unreliable) evidence.  W.D. provides no evidence whatsoever that this booing was “the loudest ever heard at the Winnipeg Arena.”  We are expected to simply accept it as fact.  But it is merely his opinion.  This argument has no weight behind it whatsoever.

Some comments show quite clearly that the commentator didn’t really read what I wrote, or read something into it that simply wasn’t there.

“And if Americans hate violence so much, why is football so staggeringly popular?”

- W.D.

Other than the fact that this is an invalid argument (the equivalent of football violence in hockey is body contact, not fighting), it came from left field.  Not once in my article was there any mention of Americans hating violence in sport.  W.D. is refuting an argument that I never made.

“...maybe you prefer what the game has become with these pussified Euro’s [sic] but the game plain out sucks now.”

- M.F.

My article commented on a bad thing in the game today (fighting).  I made no statement of preference for today’s hockey over yesterday’s.  M.F. is also reading something that just isn’t there.  I also included this quote to demonstrate the latent racism towards European players that still seems to exist among some hockey fans today.  I wonder if M.F. would call Ulf Samuelsson “pussified” to his face?  Or Darius Kasparaitis?

Not one single comment I received addressed the central point of my essay: why do “knuckle-draggers” lose 2/3 of their playing time when the playoffs roll around, if their job is so crucial to the game?  No one addressed this.  Rather, comments were mostly personal attacks, intended (I presume) to intimidate me.  Most comments could be simply summarized as “you’re plain wrong, and you’re ugly, too.”

If you’d like to read more, Klein and Reif devote an entire chapter of The Death of Hockey (chapter 5: Bad Blood) to the subject of fighting in hockey.  They are far more eloquent than I could ever hope to be.