Canadian top league bans fistfights

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We were watching a boxing match when suddenly an ice hockey match broke out. This joke has long been used in North America as a selling point to bring the speed skating sport to a wider audience. Bare brawls in organized competitions, supported by sponsors, the public and their institutions?

In the Canadian “Québec Major Junior Hockey League” (QMJHL), fist fights will no longer be allowed to take place in the future. The league, in which numerous Swiss have been given the tools for the NHL or a professional career in Switzerland (Timo Meier, Nico Hischier, Sven Andrighetto, Philip Kuraschew, Luca Cunti, Dominik Schlumpf or Christian Marti), wants to cancel the brawls from the program . Without replacement.

The flying fists in Canadian junior ice hockey have long been banned by the rules (these are 5 plus 10 penalty minutes), but making them actually disappear requires more drastic measures than short breaks in ice hockey. the cool box. The QMJHL therefore intends to punish violations with draconian bans as soon as the first violation is committed.

What does the NHL do?

In the NHL, fights are also banned in principle – only the punishment is not so severe there. More than 5 minutes is only given for repeat offenders (in the same game) or if an arsonist can be identified and punished additionally. The so-called “Instigator Rule” was again an issue at the Florida GM meeting recently because it is not consistently enforced by the umpires.

In its approach, the KMJHL not only refers to the social zeitgeist, the responsibility for the health of its athletes or the role model function of a junior level sanctioned by the national federation. Another factor is the risk of injury from hitting the head with the bare fist. In the NHL, according to long-term studies between 2000 and 2020, “only” about 9 percent of all concussions were caused by combat, the individual fate with possible long-term consequences (including chronic traumatic encephalopathy, also known as “Boxer’s disease”). “) put this first. Look at the low rate in a different light, though: Without fistfights, nearly 10 percent of all concussions could be avoided.

Between 2000 and 2020, fistfights in the NHL faded into the background, in 2001 there were 1354 heavy penalties for fights in 2460 games (0.64 fistfights per game), in 2019 there were 450 in 2542 games (0.18).

The NHL relies on the game’s rapid development as a purifying factor, even additional players today must meet the highest standards of mobility and technology. The era of bodyguards known as “enforcers” or “goons”, who patrolled the ice alongside the stars as escorts for decades, is long gone.

Fewer fights, more spectators

But even the NHL will eventually have to take an official stance against the institutionalized violence of fistfights, which is at least still tolerated. Pressure from sponsors and the public for this archaic form of conflict resolution is mounting.

Incidentally, one of the proponents’ arguments (without brawls, the NHL threatens viewership declines) is refuted by the same statistic source that noted the decline in fistfights: Although fights are decreasing, average viewership is rising.

Cleaning effect? There are no statistics that support this theory

The last stronghold of the spanking purists is the apparent cleansing effect the fistfights are supposed to have: the threat of possible punishment by a melee fighter on skates is intended to prevent offenses dangerous to health. An argument that statistics cannot confirm or refute.

All that is certain is that the NHL as a whole is playing cleaner than it was 20 years ago, and this is in direct proportion to the growing influence of tech-savvy Europeans (nearly 30 percent of all NHL players are now European).

On the old continent, fights are and have been at most a secondary part of the actual festival program. This is directly related to the punishment catalog: whoever fights is thrown off the ice.

Source : Blick