More Coverage of Fighting Coverage

The media is churning out hockey fight-related stories at a frantic pace.  Everyone wants the best quote, the best reason as to why things should or shouldn’t change.

Some commonly lacking points:

– No one has presented any evidence that fans want there to be any change in fighting rules in the NHL.

– No one has presented any evidence that corporate sponsors or broadcast partners want there to be any change in fighting rules in the NHL.

The two points above cover just about every source of revenue the NHL has.  I figured there’s no safety angle to this, so perhaps a money angle?  Nope, doesn’t seem so.

Has anyone found a screenshot yet of a fight happening, staged or not, where the fans in the stands are so bored and remain seated?  I haven’t seen any of those yet either.

– Player quotes seem to be largely in favor of leaving fighting alone, if not repealing the instigator penalty, not calling it more.  Whether or not that leads to more or less fights is another debate in itself.  This is an anecdotal point, and if anyone has numbers showing otherwise, again, please send them along.

We all love hockey as a sport.  The NHL is hockey, but the NHL is also a business and entertainment product.  The consumers of this product are seemingly being brushed aside, as are the ones that creat this product (i.e. players).

For or against fighting, there is something in common throughout the media: confusion.  What purpose this 10-minute misconduct for “staged” fights rule proposal really fills is up for debate.  Those who want to skate around it (oh, punny), will.

If the general managers, who are making this rule change suggestion, don’t want enforcers, they don’t need to sign them.  But many do, and are quite content to let these players play a few minutes a game and not develop their skillsets further.

Do they really need to create rules changes to force themselves not to sign certain players?  Is their own lack of control that bad?