To a pair of veteran Islanders pugilists, hockey’s trend away from fighting is alarming for a number of reasons.
WASHINGTON — If you are a believer in domino theory, you probably raised your eyebrows a couple weeks ago at the news that the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League will ban fighting starting next season.
• Since 2016, the OHL has subjected players to a two-game suspension for each fight after their third in a season.with Quebec’s government, which effectively bailed out franchises during the COVID-19 pandemic with the expectation that the league would crack down on fighting., the number of fights per NHL game fell from a post-lockout high of .60 in 2008-09 to just .19 in 2018-19.In short, there is a clear and obvious direction this is heading, at all levels of the game.
Johnston, who has skated in just 16 games, has fought three times, and on more than one occasion, he has been put in the lineup specifically because of a potential bout.YouTube/hockeyfights.com “Edge, presence, it loses hockey,” Johnston said. “You talk to anyone that watched the game in the past and present, when you see a fight in the stands or see a player stick up for his teammates, everyone’s on their feet. Everyone’s excited. So not only is it great for the fans, but the players themselves rally behind that guy that’s sticking up for his teammate and want to go into the war with him.
As for any potential long-term health ramifications, the players feel those risks are already built into the game, fighting or not. “If you don’t have any consequence to your actions and your only consequence is a two-minute penalty, you’re back out there doing the same thing, for sure more stuff’s gonna happen,” Johnston said. “So the whole idea to have a presence is to make people think twice to taking liberties on your players. You remove that presence and remove all those abilities, the game just turns to a little bit of chaos.
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