So on Saturday morning, I saw the 17-minute "highlight" reel of the Islanders-Penguins game the night before. This reel included such classics as the full-ice-brawl, the blind-side sucker punch, a skater fighting a goalie, and someone leaving the bench to get involved in a fight. By the end of it, Pittsburgh had five skaters on the ice and three on the bench. Everyone else had been tossed out.On Saturday there was the predictable round of lamentations that this was a disgrace to hockey. On Monday, Pittsburgh owner Mario Lemieux gets on his high horse over the lack of action taken over the event, saying something to the point that he needed to "reconsider his involvement" with the league.
The whole thing was sickening to watch.
The kicker for me? The commentator on the highlight reel mentioned that the evil deed perpetrated by Pittsburgh had been deemed a clean hockey hit. Now I have not seen the offense myself, but this goes to show you how out-of-control the "self-enforcement" of fighting has become, when a clean hockey hit leads to this kind of carrying on.
The sick feeling carried over into Saturday's afternoon game between Ottawa and Edmonton, where there was some pushing and shoving after some non-event or other on the ice. There were a couple points in the game where I nearly gave up on it.
I'm for contact in hockey.
I'm just not for fighting.
If the players fight because the refs don't call the rules, then either fix the rulebook or fix the reffing.
