by Barry Stagg
February 2000
With the 21st century upon us, we are hearing more and more in the Canadian sporting press about how hockey fighting is an embarrassment to good and civilized Canadians. What utter downtown hogwash.
Hockey fighting makes the self-righteous cringe. It matters little whether these critics are pacifistic Canadian do-gooders or Europeans looking to impose their version of hockey upon Canada . There will always be those who, in the name of civility and good taste, and perhaps, sportsmanship, will call for the banning of spontaneous hockey fights. For them, spearing, slashing and the general dirty play that produces concussions and other disabling injuries is perfectly acceptable as long as the gloves are not dropped and fists exchanged.
There are plenty of earnest and self-righteous critics of hockey who live and make their income in big Canadian cities. There they find a niche among the chattering classes where they can put forward the proposition that only a lesser form of Canadian approves of and participates in hockey fighting. These snobs regard popular Canadian hockey heros such as commentator Don Cherry and the ever popular Toronto Maple Leaf, Tie Domi as being people whose views are controversial and ultimately not acceptable in polite, sensible and pacifistic Canadian society.
In a nation of supposed peace-keepers, those who actually drop their gloves and fight for their rights are to be criticized and, indeed, pilloried. The professionally limp-wristed who hang around the fringes of hockey in the big cities seem to feel that they are gaining favour with their fellow travelling, self-anointed elite when they suggest that other, inferior Canadians who indulge in hockey fighting are, perhaps, as barbaric as those supposedly awful Newfoundland seal hunters.
We all know that there is a considerable difference of opinion in Canada about both hockey fighting and seal hunting. Those who have never had to fight for anything for themselves are not surprisingly often opposed to the normal outbursts of fighting that occur in a hockey game. Similarly, people who have never been anywhere close to a state of having to eat what they kill will never accept that seal hunting and, actually, any form of animal harvesting are anything other than the vestigial barbarism of times long past.
I am sure we of the barbaric classes can accept that there are others among us in this pluralistic Canadian society who do not agree with our views on either fighting in hockey or killing seals on sea ice. This is a country where differing views are acceptable and their co-existence ratifies our freedom and the democratic ideal that is Canada.
We do not have to accept changing the Canadian game of hockey merely because certain members of the Canadian establishment regard the boisterous Canadian hockey as being somehow uncivilized in comparison to the game played in Europe. Perhaps spearing and all around dirty and sneaky play which is characteristic of the fight- free European game is preferable to some over good, honest, in- your-face fighting. I beg to differ. Fighting, particularly without the instigator rule, makes for a more honest hockey game. The fighters will fight and those who would be tempted to spear, slash and generally attempt to injure without fear of painful punishment will soon learn that type of transgression will be punished by a fist to the face.
Canadians who like their hockey just the way it is, should aggressively insist that if the pacifists and the apologists of Canada and the rest of the world persist in calling them barbarians then so be it. Let us be barbarians for a change. There are too many people who would do away with the essence of Canadian hockey just so that some uninitiated observer in a tropical country will not be upset by the sight of fists flying.
Spare us the studied superiority of the Kenny Dryden brigade and bring on the gritty realism of the fighting Canadians who uphold a national hockey tradition from Gordie Howe on through to John Ferguson, Eddie Shack, Dave Semenko and Wendel Clark.
Until next month, be proud, be prosperous.