THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

So, Tom, do you approve fighting in hockey? If so, what would you say about this scenario? Suppose a hockey player is attacked by someone bigger and stronger, and gets thrashed. Later, in retaliation, suppose the player who lost the fight deliberately took out his attacker’s knee or something like that. Would that be acceptable?

I’m not in favor of going from current to the zero-tolerance of international play (ejection).  There’s a way to reduce fighting, without going from one extreme to another extreme.  I talked about it a year ago.

If you watch playoff hockey, you see a totally different approach to fighting by the teams.  They consider it to high-risk in the playoffs.  So, they police themselves by not giving their goons too much ice time (or even dressing them in the game).

I’d favor an approach to regular season that would emulate the playoffs.  For example, you can’t have say more than 1 fight for 60 minutes of ice time.  Your standard goon has, per 82 games, 20 fights and 400 minutes of ice time.  We don’t want those guys.

But, a skilled tough player, one who fights say 10 times a season and plays 12-13 minutes a game, those guys are good (ratio of 100 minutes per fight) for the NHL.

The accounting should happen at the end of the season.  And you have some severe penalties for teams who have played who have too many fights over the line.