She says: Yes.
Aileen Ormoc
Sports Editor
There desperately needs to be a ban on all physical contact in hockey.
I understand where all you hockey fans are coming from, with the idea of roughhousing as typically a staple of every game, but there needs to be some sort of restriction imposed before anyone else gets seriously injured.
Sports fans know the crowd’s energy, in any given game, is a contributing factor to the team’s overall success.
And in hockey, roughhousing has become a tradition over the years that gets the crowd engaged in the game.
But I don’t buy into it and neither should you.
Think of all the other sports that manage to stir up a crowd of thousands without the slightest hint of a fist fight or physical contact.
In this year’s NBA finals between the Miami Heat and Oklahoma City Thunder, Miami didn’t need a full-on brawl to get the crowd going. Instead, their speed, their ability to work as a team, and, of course, their Lebron are what made the audience get behind their team.
The team’s overall performance should be enough to get the energy pumping through the crowd.
The main reason I support a ban on all hockey fights goes back two summers ago, when I was watching the 6 o’clock news and saw news of yet another NHL player’s suicide flash across the screen.
On May 2011, the body of Derek Boogaard, former New York Ranger, was found by his brothers who had come to town to visit. Because of his violent history in the NHL, Boogaard was dubbed Derek “the Boogeyman” Boogaard.
And on August 2011, the Winnipeg Jets forward, Rick Rypien, was also found dead in his home, while in that same month, Wade Belak, of the Nashville Predators, hung himself in a Toronto condo.
Boogaard, Rypien, and Belak were known in the NHL as aggressors on the rink. They suffered multiple concussions that were all in the supposed “spirit” of the game.
Furthermore, they each had a history of mental deterioration combined with an addiction to narcotics.
In 2011, the New York Times reported that an autopsy of Boogaard’s brain revealed that he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) a degenerative brain ailment similar to Alzheimer’s disease. The cause is believed to be repeated blows to the head.
According to scientists, symptoms of CTE include memory loss, impulsiveness, mood swings, and even addiction.
Among those diagnosed were boxers and over 20 deceased football players—both sports notorious for trauma to the head.
The fourth hockey player examined for the disease, Boogaard tested positive just like the rest.
Although there isn’t a direct link between CTE and the growing number of hockey-related suicides, the bottom line is fighting on the rink poses a serious threat to the players’ mental health.
The well-being of the players is just as important, if not more, than shooting a puck into the net.
And although a lot of roughhousing exists in the NHL, it sets a bad precedent for hopeful students on university teams. We should encourage team spirit, and not fist-fighting.
The NHL has made an effort to curb the number of head injuries to players. They are strongly enforcing rule 48 (not permitting hits in contact with opponents’ head where the head is targeted) followed by an increase in the number of penalties and suspensions for hits to the head.
Despite this good news, more needs to be done to improve policies that have the players’ best interest in mind.
She says: No.
Alyssa Dool
Contributor
I grew up in a town where parents were more likely to send you onto the ice when you had a loose tooth instead of helping you tie a string around a door knob. Boys played hockey on self-made rinks proudly showing off their game wounds. Body checking, mouthing off, and brawling were just a part of the game, and it wasn’t something worth complaining about.
Parents were always very strict about rink etiquette. The terrible stories you heard about players in the NHL were never applauded or joked about. They were constant reminders about the discipline needed in hockey.
Everyone was excited when a defenceman checked a player with the puck. No one would defend attacks like Todd Bertuzzi’s infamous one in 2004 on Steve Moore.
Who could forget the 2007 brawl between all 12 players of the Ottawa Senators and the Buffalo Sabres, extending into 100 mintues of penalty time?
Neither the NHL nor the Canadian Interuniversity Sport support brutal attacks on ice.
In fact, the majority of the players known as the aggressors in those attacks have had their career ended on the spot.
There is a difference between physical contact between players and an actual attack.
Put simply, full contact play should not be taken out of hockey.
I would never condone attacking a player from behind.
But there is something intriguing about a little roughhousing on the rink. A brief brawl between players gets both the fans and players riled up to increase the team’s momentum.
This makes hockey different from any other sport on television.
In any other sport, physical contact outside of the rules of the game are strictly prohibited.
In soccer, they enforce a penalty card system to warn, reprimand, or penalize players that take their aggression out on other players.
In basketball, players are penalized for phsycial contact through personal fouls and awarding penalty shots to the other team.
If the injuries occurring from these not-so-friendly gameplays concern you, here’s something to take into account: most of the serious injuries we hear of occuring on the ice are not caused by the players.
Most of the time it’s a puck to the face that collapses a player or the bud end of a hockey stick.
In 2000, Trent McCleary’s windpipe was crushed by a puck and his hockey career virtually ended. In 2008, Patrick Thoresen’s testical was nearly ruptured when he attempted to make the save and got a puck to the groin. In 2004, Mathieu Schnieder took a puck to the eye and had a four-hour surgery to repair his scratched cornea and broken bone.
All of these injuries were horrific. I still remember hiding my face in my dad’s shoulder when Schnieder made contact with the puck.
But you do not hear anybody raging about replacing a dense rubber puck with a cotton ball into hockey.
If we are trying to stop the players from getting injured, we are better off just banning the game.
It is unnecessary for fighting to be banned in the NHL and university athletics. I can assure you it is not going to happen anytime soon.
Hockey has always been a physical-contact sport, and the fact of the matter is, if you take away that aspect, you would be turning hockey into basketball—and nobody wants that.
