Adam Burish Drops the Gloves and Explains Why Hockey Players Fight
Adam Burish has his own blog at the Sun-Times called Dropping the Gloves which has just been oodles of fun so far (most notably for his raucous appearance as an “enforcer” of sorts on the Jerry Springer show). In a three-part series he artfully explains why hockey players fight and the rules of enforcement. Bur notes that the biggest reason they fight in hockey is “to stick up for a teammate or to prove a point to the other team. Let’s say Jonathan Toews is flying around the ice, stick-handling around the other team. He’s already scored two goals and one of the opposing team’s tough guys wants to try and intimidate him with a big hit or slash in an attempt to slow him down.”
Bur goes on to say,
As a team, we have a responsibility to stick up for each other and make sure the other team understands that if you want to take a cheap shot at one of us, you are going to be held accountable. In this example, once that player takes a cheap shot at Toews, you skate right over to that player, drop your gloves, grab him and instead of asking him to “go” you tell him “we’re going you (fill in the blank),” and start swinging. This sends a message to the other team that they will not take liberties with guys on our team, and if you do you will have to fight for it.
Most guys don’t want to fight every night so they won’t take those cheap shots. It’s really like a big playground in middle school. Once you let the bully whose playing pick on one kid, he’s going to run around and keep picking on other kids until somebody stands up to him. Well, at our playground at the United Center, we don’t let bullies play very long. These situations are normally the ones where guys are pretty angry and you won’t get that friendly conversation like you saw in the first part.
…So you see mom, it’s not so bad!
Read this blog entry in its entirety here. Read Part II and Part I of ‘Why We Fight in the NHL’.