Michael Foreman
November 3, 2015
Arguing a Position
What is Hockey without Violence?
Hockey, too many people, is the greatest sport to mankind. The great atmosphere of being at the rink filled with loving hockey fans. The smell of beer and hot dogs throughout the stadium and getting rowdy to all the big hits, beautiful goals, and the dirty fights. I’ve played hockey just about my whole life and if there is nothing in the whole world that gets me more excited than hitting and fighting. The gasp in the crowd from a big open ice hit or the blood from a goons face after a solid punch. It excites the crowd more than anything. Violence in hockey is what really gets the crowd going.
Hockey is a very violent sport, probably the most violent next to MMA fighting. It comes with harder hits than any other sport and as much blood and fighting as your regular MMA match. The hard hits and fights could lead to multiple concussions for several players. Critics nowadays are cracking down on everything. There the same people that are also cracking down on the football concussions trying to lessen the violence in that sport as well. Beside the injuries that the fighting and the hits provide, another reason critics believe new rules should be taken in hand is to prevent youth players to continue the violence. Young hockey players and fan are vulnerable to anything around the youth ages (4-7). Knowing that, if they see fighting on TV or at the game, it encourages them to go out at their next game and lay a solid hit on another player because they saw it on TV. That then led to rules in the hockey program at that age. They can’t even hit until there about 11-12 years old now. With this violence in hockey right now, critics want to start adding new rules to the game prevent the violence in the sport. First off, they want to ban fighting in the NHL permanently but that would never go okay with any hockey fan so they thought of rules they could enforce. The rules they want to enforce is to make it more penalized. They want to give out possible fines and suspensions if any fights were to break out in any games. They have already enforces that throughout high school hockey. In high school level hockey, if you get in any type of fighting they instantly grab you and take you to the box for a major penalty which is 5 minutes. If the fighting got any more serious they would kick you out of the game and you wouldn’t be able to play in the next game as well. They got all those rules enhance through any other league so I don’t see why they would be enforcing it the more competitive levels here soon.
Hockey has been around ever since the 1800’s in Canada coming from a game called Hurley. And even the sport that hockey originated from was just as violent as hockey is today. Any sport with any type of hitting is going to be violent no matter what. Ever since hockey has been a sport fighting has been involved. Except todays hockey is actually a lot safer. Old time hockey is what fans nowadays live for. They want to see all those big hits and blood gushing faces on the ice putting everything they have to put down their opponent. Since the sport is violent, no matter what there are going to be injuries. Even in sports that aren’t violent still have a ton of injuries. It’s not just hitting sports that cause injuries, it’s just the way the body takes it. That’s what the critics want to do is prevent injury.
Critics do have a good point with everything about the concussions and other injuries that hitting and fighting can cause. But hockey has been this way ever since it became a sport. We can’t just now start bringing all these rules in to ruin the sport. People love it the way it and would go nuts if they started bringing in these obscured rules. Hockey, today, is not as violent as people even want it to be and critics still want to add these finings and suspensions. Atlantic writer Patrick Hruby states that in the past years the fighting rate is at a 5 year low of 0.49 fights per game and they’re afraid it’s going to stop people from viewing the games because it’s hurting the games health. According to the NHL CEO Gary Bettman, in the wall street journal he states a recorded all time low this past year of households that viewed in on the NHL playoffs was 1.8 million households. He then states the NHL has “somewhere around 50 million fans” (Bettman). Those two statistics right there proves that if there’s no fighting and hitting in any of the games, viewers won’t watch.
Hockey isn’t like any other sport. It’s a combination between numerous sports. You need the strength and power as a football player, the stamina of an Olympic distance runner, the hand eye coordination of a baseball player, and the balance of a gymnast. Even though it’s a combination of all those sports, it’s nothing compared to any of them. It is actually less dangerous than a lot of sports especially football. People compare them two together a lot because of how the hitting is kind of the same but really, it’s not at all. Most football players like getting low to hit their opponents which leads to putting your head down and makes you way more prone to a head, neck, or spine injury. When hockey players hit, they either come at a pursuit angle and hit with their hips into the boards or they go straight shoulder into their opponent. No other sports is played at such a fast pace game and then just out of nowhere drop the gloves and break into a fist fight. Most of the time it’s not even anything against them. Usually it’s just for the love of the game or it’s a rivalry and your teammates are doing it. I think that’s what the critics don’t understand is the reason players fight and hit the way they do is for the pride of their team and teammates. Hockey players grow a bond between teammates like no other, even with their opponents. They don’t fight because they don’t like that certain individual they do it for pride.
If you watch a game yourself, you’re lucky if you see one fight throughout the whole game. In my table below it describes just how much less violent hockey is today.
| Year | Games Played | Total Fights | Games with fights | Fights per game |
| 01-02 season | 1230 | 803 | 519 | 0.65 |
| 14-15 season | 1230 | 391 | 331 | 0.32 |
In the 01-02 season there 1230 games played and 803 total fights and 519 games with fights. In the 14-15 season there were 1230 games played and 391 fights and 331 games with fights. The 14-15 season is the 2nd lowest year in fights in the past 15 years. Now that is bad. That’s about 2x as many fights 15 years ago in the NHL. Also, in the 01-02 season there were 0.65 fights per game and in the 14-15 season there were 0.32 fights per game. That is literally half of what it was in the 01-02 season. In the 14-15 season there was only two games that had more than one fight a game. In the 01-02 season there were 172 games with more than one fight. Now that unbelievable. That is a hell of a change in just 15 years. This, once again, shows today’s hockey isn’t even violent. The thing is people are getting faster and stronger and everything else can’t keep up. Another reason that proves less violence can turn someone away is because I remember in high school, my freshman year, you could literally could two hand someone in the back of the legs and not even get yelled at for it. Then in my senior year, I couldn’t even touch a player without getting a roughing penalty on me. It’s like you couldn’t hit at all in any of the games because they were so strict about violence. So that made me start losing love for the sport because the violence was the best part.
In concluding this essay, I’m not trying to promote violence in any way. Neither is the NHL. But it’s what the sport is and if you don’t like it then watch golf or something that is a little less violent for you. The NHL isn’t all the violent right now but all hockey fans can agree that it should be more violent. It doesn’t have to be crazy violent but enough to keep everyone entertained. The Atlantic article did a good job on explaining the whole the violence idea. My stats proved greatly that there was definitely a huge change in fighting in the past years. No matter how violent hockey gets, it’s all about the love of the game. Just to lace up those skates, throw that jersey over your pads, and go out there and play the sport you love.
Works Cited
NHL Fight Stats.” Hockey Fight Statistics. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Oct. 2015.
Roundtable, Sports. “As Hockey Gets More Violent, More People Are Watching: Coincidence?” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 20 Apr. 2012. Web. 14 Oct. 2015