ShareThisLook, it's not rocket science. Getting rid of fighting in hockey is easy.
The problem is the National Hockey League doesn't want to do it, as was reflected by Wayne Gretzky's statement last week that fighting ought to be outlawed everywhere but the NHL.
Getting players to tighten their chinstraps or leave their helmets on during fights is a laughable suggestion. This is a league that can't enforce its goaltending equipment rules. And based on the stuff you see on the video screens at every NHL arena, it's clear the league markets fighting -- helped along by its broadcast partners on both sides of the border, at least one of whom last weekend had no qualms about showing a hockey fight on the same telecast as a report on the first game between the junior Whitby Dunlops and Brantford Blast since the death of player Don Sanderson in a fight. Tasteless, but not surprising.
Here's how you'd mitigate against fighting: make teams play short-handed for the full five minutes of the penalty, just as the league currently does with other five-minute majors. After all, what's fighting if it isn't a deliberate attempt to injure?
Give any player instigating a fight an additional two minutes -- again, to be served in full. (If you want to be Draconian, make it a double-minor to be served in full. Or an additional five-minute major.)
Fining players is a joke because it's lunch money for pro athletes. So put the onus on coaches and the one or two Neanderthals on every NHL roster and make it an offense with strategic implications. You'd start changing the mindset of the people who make the decisions at ice-level -- and the guess here is a steady diet of 4-on-4 hockey would be more entertaining.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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