Demitra Happy About Boogaard’s Return

The Star Tribune has a story about Pavol Demitra, and how the Sens’ Neil and Volchenkov might not have taken a run at him if Derek Boogaard was playing that game (he was out with an injury at the time).

From Teams lacking enforcer have faced consequences:

The Wild was defenseless with bruiser Derek Boogaard at home because of an ankle injury. Demitra is convinced both Ottawa players would have thought twice about running them if Boogaard and the intimidating presence he supplies had been in the building.

Demitra says that’s proof there’s still a place for fighters in the NHL. “You need a guy as tough as Boogey that the other team respects, a guy that backs up the team,” he said.

There’s a hockeyfights.com reference in there as well.  We get to provide the sad statistic about how much fighting has declined since 2003-04.

It was a slow Saturday night.  Just three scraps.  Ian Laperriere finally (a little background info) got his chance to go with Sean Avery, who was booted immediately after the fight for not having his strap tied down.

After the jump is a Youtube video of Parros-Roy.  It’s a little longer than the downloadable clip.  It includes Bolts’ color man Bobby Taylor talking about Brian Burke wanting to put together a team that scores, doesn’t trap - and fights.  It doesn’t get old hearing about it and the fact that it’s happened, that the Ducks are sitting on top of the league and not letting anyone push them around, is why there are more fans of Anaheim here on the site than ever before (and I’m sure de-Disney-ifying didn’t hurt).

Update Dec 10 105pm: Links for older fights were broken, now fixed.

Parros vs Roy - Vote!