Fighting Over Fighting

It might have been his fourth NHL game, but Kevin Westgarth made his first NHL impression last night.  A quick bout against Darcy Hordichuk gave him his first regular season NHL fight.  Be sure to check out both feeds of the action.

A phantom problem

The bigger story today is about the General Manager meetings in Naples, FL.  A nice suburban town on the beach, about 20 minutes from where the Florida Everblades play home games, the league’s movers and shakers are discussing rules changes, including those pertaining to fighting.

The media has written a lot about “staged fights”.  They created a problem the league is now looking at fixing.  No-touch offsides and the goalie trapezoid agree, sometimes you should just change something for the sake of it.

There were no fan polls conducted by the league, there were no fewer people standing up in arenas – somehow some fights were deemed “staged”, a word implying they’re fake.  Whether or not there are visible boiling points beforehand, ask an NHLer if he’s ever been in a fake fight.  The answer will be no.

To half-appease those in the media that dislike fighting in the NHL, there’s talk of eliminating these so-called staged fights.  To the NHL I say: don’t bother, it’s all or none.

Ivy Neanderthal

The latest enforcer to break into the NHL is another Princeton alum (you might recognize a moustache of another in George Parros).

The most vocal GM defender of fighting (to the media) in the NHL is Brian Burke, a Harvard grad.

It’d be nice for the critics to remember these things the next time “knuckle-draggers” and “neanderthals” are used as descriptions of those who support fighting.