Scooter Chronicles

Unbelievable as it may be, it’s true.

As much as he can be a real idiot at times, I am glad to see NHL Commisioner Gary Bettman’s approach to the recent issue of player safety in the NHL in regards to fighting. (ARTICLE thanks to ESPN’s web site.) For those that don’t know, a recent fight between Todd Fedoruk of the Philadelphia Flyers and Colton Orr of the New York Rangers led NHL exec Colin Campbell to say that they need to look into things. It led to many people getting worried that he meant taking fighting completely out of the game.

Bettman said that it wasn’t the case, but they wanted to look at player safety, considering that a known tough-guy like Fedoruk could be seriously hurt in a fight. (Fedoruk was KO’d by Orr and took off the ice on a stretcher.) They have no plans to take fighting out of the game, but to see what can be done to increase player safety.

Why do I agree with Bettman? Because fighting is a necessary evil of the game. I know there are people that would argue with me and say that is why I watch the game (which is the furthest from the truth). I would happily watch hockey without fights if we could lose all the cheap shots, too. That’s the reason fighting is needed. If you have no recourse to a cheap shot that could seriously injure a teammate, then it only leads to more cheap shots. At least with fighting, you know it’s coming, and it’s usually only the guys that are willing to fight that actually fight.

Bettman should concentrate some of the effort to eliminate the type of hockey that leads to fighting, but I am glad to see that he knows he can’t take away something that though injures players, also keeps far more players from further or more severe injuries.