5/11/2023 0 Comments Hockey fight pro gameThey have broadcasting deals with ESPN+ and TSN. Screengrab/ESPN+įounded in 1986, the NLL has 15 teams - 10 in the United States, and five in Canada. The Rochester Nighthawks and Albany FireWolves saw their frustrations boil over into 74 minutes worth of penalties near the end of their Saturday matchup. In all, 74 penalty minutes were doled out to 10 players for the brouhaha, which interrupted a 16-7 Rochester win. Woods - who had taken over in the Albany net 48 seconds before - and Hartley exchanged blows until they both wound up on the ground and were ejected. “They gotta charge extra for this!” exclaimed the announcer as the goalies dumped their gear and prepared to throw down. What started as a scrum between players in front of the benches turned into FireWolves goalie Ethan Woods squaring off against Rochester Knighthawks netminder Rylan Hartley. Ethan Woods (left) and Ryan Hartley threw some serious haymakers in their NLL fight on Saturday. In the National Lacrosse League on Saturday, the Rochester Knighthawks held a commanding 13-4 lead over the Albany Firewolves when frustrations boiled over. One such lacrosse fight over the weekend featured some heavy haymakers. Photo: New Jersey Devils' Pierre-Luc Letourneau-Leblond, left, fights with New York Rangers' Jody Shelley during the first period of an NHL hockey game Wednesday, March 10, 2010, in Newark, N.J.You know a hockey fight was intense when the goalies dropped their gloves to duke it out. ![]() It just needs the right kind of fighting. If that sounds a bit too Wild West, then remember that the West was tamed not only by lawmen but by individuals who knew the risks of being too aggressive and trigger-happy. It's a grassroots solution for a gap that can’t ever be filled by referees or league authorities. Conducted honorably, between combatants who understand that physical punishment is the consequence of unacceptable behavior, it's a relatively safe, constrained and consistent form for players to hold each other accountable. A brawl during a recent Federal Prospects Hockey League game took the craziness to another level, though. Formal justice weighs consequence more heavily than character - yet character matters. Fighting in hockey games always get fans juices flowing. For every head-concussing hit that's punished, another dangerous play goes unpunished or wrist-slapped, and unavoidably so: Each game contains dozens of potentially injurious moments, and if every stray high-stick or head-down was punished like it caused an injury, the game would be unwatchable. All sports are metaphors for life, and hockey more than any other embodies the limitations of law. In that failure to reduce concussions is an important lesson. A common lament among hockey executives is that players simply have less respect for each other than before - and as the NHL's failed attempt to reduce head-targeting body checks by delivering more and longer suspensions to blatant transgressors has shown, the solution to these problems won't be administrative. Its salary structure has created a distinct category of young, low-salaried third- and fourth-line players who function as puck-chipping guided missiles. The NHL's misbegotten emphasis on speed has made collisions more dangerous and unavoidable. If anything, hockey is more brutal than at any time in recent memory - witness the injuries, especially the now-endless parade of concussions - and demonizing fighting has become an easy escape from confronting the game's deeper problems. ![]() That proposition may be difficult to prove through opinion and anecdote (though certainly Wayne Gretzky would agree) but it's clear that a decades-long decline in fighting has not made the game less vicious. The threat of fighting also discourages reckless or cheap play. Indeed, there's a case to be made that fights provide an emotional safety valve, settling conflicts before they escalate into actions more dangerous than punches: Better to tussle and be done than worry about 220-pound men skating 20 miles per hour with vengeance on their minds. To see two grimacing grown men throwing punches may be discomfortingly primal, but the blows do no more damage than plays considered routine and acceptable, or at least undeserving of hand-wringing denunciation. ![]() Why, then, should intentional fighting be considered uniquely bad, worse than the knee-shredding collisions or eye-gouging high sticks or mouth-shattering stray pucks whose place in the game fans blithely accept? To be a hockey fan - however pacifist - is to be complicit in paying people to risk their health and well-being for one's personal enjoyment. But it does mean that no bright ethical line separates the pro- and anti-fighting camps. Now, simply because a game is unavoidably a contact sport isn’t reason enough to abandon any limits on violence.
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