On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 11:50 AM, Charles Robinson <charl...@visi.com> wrote:
> The focus on the actual sport rather than the childish fisticuffs of NHL > hockey makes Olympic hockey a much more entertaining view, in my opinion. I agree 100%!! Unfortunately there's a small but vocal faction in this country (headed by an obnoxious celebrity pundit named Don Cherry, former NHLer with a completely unremarkable career and former NHL coach who won nothing but was popular) who want fighting to be kept in the game. They claim that it's a "safety valve" and that if it was banned all sorts of dirty stuff would happen since one couldn't legally retaliate unpenalized transgressions and everyone would pick on the small-but-skilled players if goons couldn't protect them by beating up anyone who was mean to the big stars. Of course, these people conveniently ignore or explain away the fact that leagues (like US college hockey) and international tournaments where fighting's banned often feature wonderfully skilled and exciting play. I wish they'd ban fighting in the NHL and all Canadian leagues. It cheapens the game, and to the uninitiated makes our sport look like little more than Roller Derby or professional wrestling. Funny, but in the NHL playoffs one often sees less fighting, especially in tight games, because no one wants to risk being in the penalty box when a team scores a winning goal. Yet those games are the most exciting games to watch. I'm with you: ban fighting, improve the game. The Olympic tourney featured lots of robust play and was a pleasure to watch. Sorry about this very OT rant, but we Canadians tend to take hockey very seriously... ;-) cheers, frank -- "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." -Henri Cartier-Bresson -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
