And Now the Break

And fighting is up, too – 514 fights projected this season by the hockeyfights.com Web site – after the dramatic drop-off last season (just 466 fights, compared to 789 in 2003-04, the year before the 2004-05 season was canceled due to a labor dispute).

“In my opinion, they have taken a little bit of the courage out of the game,” said former Thrashers player Jeff Odgers, who holds the club career penalty minutes record three years after his retirement. “And I’m not talking about just the fighting. I’m talking about having to pay a price to get to a position to score a goal, to battle into the slot. It used to [risk] your life to stand in front of the net.”

Odgers, who spent 12 seasons in the NHL before joining the Atlanta club’s radio broadcast team, admits to enjoying watching the game’s most skillful players, who now maneuver without the defensive clutching of decades past. But he also hears regularly from others – fans as well as people in hockey – who feel something significant has gone missing.

“It’s not to say that the new game isn’t entertaining and it’s not good,” Odgers said. “But there’s a lot of people who do miss that old style, where it’s a little bit tougher, a little bit harder to play. In my opinion, you used to have to be more accountable for your actions, where you had to answer for them.”

“Tough [guy] or not tough, if you can’t skate, you can’t play,” Campbell said. “If you can’t skate, you can’t survive.”

Many of the game’s top pugilists haven’t. Of the five busiest fighters from the 2003-04 season, two – Krzysztof Oliwa and Matt Johnson – are out of the league. Two others – Columbus’ Jody Shelley and Buffalo’s Andrew Peters – now barely see one shift a game.