Hockey is a sport with many quirks. Many of these quirks are obvious. The game is played on a sheet of ice. The players wear blades on boots and carry around sticks. The game revolves around a tiny piece of rubber. All of these make hockey unique to other sports. Hockey possesses another unique quirk. Unlike other sports, you are genuinely allowed to get into a fist fight with the opponent. While I have never been in a hockey fight, I have witnessed my Penguins get into a good few and surprisingly my own teammates as well. For this week, I want to discuss how bizarre this aspect of the sport is, its tragic decline, and some fun fight stories.  

The idea of fighting in the NHL has been around since 1922, however it has been a part of the sport for even longer. Over the century since, the league has developed a set of rules in order to regulate how players engaged in fist fights. These range from requiring players to fight bare fisted rather than wearing thick hockey gloves to players who start the fight or join in later receiving extra penalties. As more and more rules were created, the role of the fight shifted within the game. The most notable of these was the rise of the enforcer. An enforcer is a player hired solely to hit hard and protect star players by fighting opponents who come after stars. For years, the enforcer was able to earn a lucrative paycheck by playing a gritty and defensive-minded game. In recent years, with the rise of analytics in sports, the role of the enforcer has diminished. Teams have opted for players with better metrics and more speed in order to win games in a new NHL era.  

Moving on to personal stories, one Penguins game always stands out as one of the wildest moments I have watched. The game was versus the New York Islanders circa 2010. Both teams had played a physical game and tensions finally boiled over in a moment of pure chaos. Down 3-0, Islanders goalie Rick DiPietro slammed into a Penguin away from the puck. In a second, the Penguins and Islanders were in a shoving match in the corner. As this happened, Penguins goalie Brett Johnson rushed down the ice, throwing off his helmet and gloves in order to fight DiPietro. Johnson thoroughly beat DiPietro and the crowd went wild.  

Another fight story, this time from my own past, revolves around my high school’s rivalry with another team (to remain nameless). The team had an incredibly rude crowd of fans at every home game, leading to high tensions every matchup. At one game, one of our defenseman transformed into a brick wall when the opponent tried to hit him, causing that opponent to break his collarbone upon landing. Throughout the rest of the game, penalty after penalty was called, culminating with one of my friends getting into a hockey fight with an opponent. They threw punches until they tumbled where they thrashed on the ground until the referees broke the fight up. As a player not interested in playing overly physical, I watched horrified from the bench.