by Rayne Britt

Created on: November 24, 2008   Last Updated: January 30, 2011

Among the myriad reasons I prefer semi-pro hockey games to the NHL (cheaper tickets, cheaper concessions, easy availability of rink-side seats, and so on) one of my biggest for going is the fighting. With the team we used to have about 15 years ago here in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, fights at games were such common occurrences we had a little saying: "I went to see the fight and a hockey game broke out". The new team hasn't disappointed us in the brawling department either. And that's why the majority of the fans around here go to the local games. Oh sure, it's a fantastic sport, the players are talented, but, in the end, I paid to see blood! I paid to beat on the glass and yell and watch the gloves fly off and two guys pound the living daylights out of one another! Am I proud of it? Well, yeah, kind of.

Tensions are going to happen in any sport and triply so in any contact sport. Hockey is special in that it's considered within the norm for you to start trading blows with the guy(s) the tension is being caused by compared to say football were punching the guy that just tackled you is a more serious offense and considered poor sportsmanship. In hockey, you face a few minutes in the penalty box. Big deal, right? But oddly, there isn't a lot of malice in the sport. Some one ticks you off, you throw off your gloves, wail on the guy, serve your time in the penalty box and get back out there and play. Usually, that hostility lasts for only the one game. Afterwards, there are no death threats or law suits. You get it out of your system that game and you're done with it, no hard feelings afterwards.

It's going to happen with or without the fans being there because it is such an intense sport. The fans add to the amount of fights in that they tend to encourage the fighting when it happens or threatens to happen. Newer players might feel obliged to slug it out with someone to please the fans or drum up the team morale. Some may do it just because they feel they have something to prove. So the fights are going to happen with or without spectators. The fact someone is watching will always push a fight to happen even if it may not have occurred otherwise or to escalate the fight beyond what it might have been so the fans are not necessarily responsible for the fighting in general but they definitely promote fighting to happen more frequently because it just one of those things we love about the sport.

If anything, there isn't enough violence in the NHL. You might go a whole game and never see a single fight. Comparing that to the SPHL game I saw a couple of weeks ago where there were four fights in the one game with the first being three minutes into the first period, fighting in the NHL seems almost a rare occurrence for the sport.

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