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Fighting in hockey “Sanderson, a defenceman with the Whitby Dunlops, died early yesterday in Hamilton General Hospital. He had been in a coma and on life support since his head struck the ice during a fight in a AAA senior league game Dec. 12 in Brantford.”(Miller 2009) Don Sanderson was 21 years old; during a fight, he “lost his helmet and was knocked unconscious when his head hit the ice. He was in a coma before his death on Friday.”(Wyshynski 2009) His death led to a furious debate in hockey, on whether the league should take away fighting from the game or not. Some said yes and some disagree. Fighting happens during a game due to different reason. Sometimes a player took a “cheap shot” at the other team’s player, and the other team might take revenge by fighting. Since sometimes rules couldn’t protect the players, fighting is used by “enforcers” to “police” the game. In other cases, fighting heats up the emotion between two teams and shifts the momentum of the game. But sometimes, there might just be no reason for fighting. It might be just a bad blood between players but it’s not necessary. Fighting has a really long history in hockey, and “rise in popularity in 19th century Canada” (Fighting in Ice Hockey). So you can really say that fighting is a part of hockey. The debate of whether fighting should be existed in hockey was discussed for a long time. But Sanderson’s death and the rising number of fights heated up the topic once again. After another horrifying fight between Garret Klotz and Kevin Wesgarth, Blogger Steve Dangle challenged the fight supporters: “But let's say a guy discovers his little brother is being bullied at school. One day, he confronts the bully. So one day he clocks him one real good right between the eyes. And all the kids in the school yard cheer, and laugh, because who doesn't like to see a fight? All of a sudden, the cheering stops when the kids realize - this kid ain't gettin' up.”(Dangle 2009) Obviously, when two people fight, they are trying to injure their opponent. Whether they intended to do so or if it was just an accident, fighting hurts people. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t fight. Steve counters the point that “fighting is a part of the game”: “At what point during a fight does a player create or disrupt a scoring chance?”(Dangle 2009) Really, nowadays there are teams that sign “heavyweight” players not to play the game but only fight. Most of these heavyweights are not good at playing hockey, but still they took a spot in the roster. He also talked about the league should tighten the rules so that the rules protect the players, instead of having enforcers to punish the dirty plays. For people who support fighting, they think that rules won’t be able to regulate the game. They believe that if fighting is taken out from the game, there might be more injuries from cheap shots then from fighting. Brian Burke, the Gm of the Toronto Maple Leafs is a buyer of fighting. "You can't have a contact sport with no out of bounds and with hitting, without having fighting," Burke said. "If we (remove fighting) we cannot create a safe workplace for our players. ...” (Wyshynski 2009) Brian Burke won a Stanley Cup in 2007 by building an Anaheim Ducks team that’s known for their toughness. It’s just very ironic that you have to fight your opponents to protect your players. It really doesn’t make sense at all but that’s how the league has operated through out the history. Yahoo Sports Blogger Greg Wyshynski discussed that hockey is just a tough sport: “a player dies accidentally from a fight, and we ban fighting. What happens when tragedy strikes in another facet of the game? ... perhaps we can only accept that hockey is, fundamentally, a violent sport.”(Wyshynski 2009) When you look at sports like American football or maybe basketball, they also have a good amount of hits especially football, but does fighting play any role on both of these sports? Maybe it’s the culture of hockey that made it so different from the other sports, and culture takes time to change. If we are not allowed to fight in the public, why can hockey players fight in front of 20,000 audiences? What’s the difference between a hockey player and a normal person? Of course, sometimes you have to look at the market point of view. When ever there's a fight, it just draw people's attention. In some other people’s view, it might not be that extreme, as blogger Pension Pet Puppets (PPP) wrote: “it is made to seem that there is no middle ground.”(PPP 2009) He noted that though there are so many fights going around, there hasn’t been as much accident. He also said that fighting really brings people into the game because some of the audience only wants to see fights then hockey. It’s really hard to balance off. So it’s a dilemma. In some case, fighting really gives bad image, to parents, or to a non-American culture that aren’t used to fighting, for example Europe. These factors hinder the chance for the NHL to strive, but at the same time, they attract Canadians or Americans fan bases. As a hockey fan myself, I have to admit that I enjoy fights in hockey. It makes you emotional. I like hockey better then fighting. If there's no hockey, the fighting will just be a plain fight. If an accident happened once, it will probably happen again some day sooner or later. You either fix the problem or you stop doing the same thing, or else that accident could happen again. We couldn't just sit still, debate and take no action. Either keeping fighting or banning fighting, there has to be something to do in order to prevent the accident from happening. And we should do it in a creative way. Bibliography Miller, Jason. "TheStar.com | GTA | Hockey player dies after fight." __TheStar.com Toronto Edition - Breaking News, Sports, Entertainment, Business, Classifieds, Local and National News - GTA,__ __Toronto____,__ __Ontario____,__ __Canada__. 03 Jan. 2009. 04 Feb. 2009 . Wyshynski, Greg. "Puck Headlines: After tragedy, fight debate reaches critical mass - Puck Daddy... - NHL - Yahoo! Sports." __Yahoo! Sports - Sports News, Scores, Rumors, Fantasy Games, and more__. 04 Jan. 2009. 04 Feb. 2009 .

"Fighting in ice hockey -." __Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia__. 04 Feb. 2009 . Dangle, Steve. "Fighting: We must evolve." Weblog post. __Profile Blog - Leafspace -__. 28 Jan. 2009. 4 Feb. 2009 . Wyshynski, Greg. "Brian Burke: Fighting advocate with a rat problem - Puck Daddy - NHL - Yahoo! Canada Sports." __Yahoo! Canada Sports - Sports News, Scores, Rumors, Fantasy Games, and more__. 22 Jan. 2009. 04 Feb. 2009 http://ca.sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_daddy/post/Brian-Burke-Fighting-advocate-with-a-rat-proble?urn=nhl,136158 Wyshynski, Greg. "NHL decides to appease critics with GM fighting ban debate - Puck Daddy - NHL - Yahoo! Canada Sports." __Yahoo! Canada Sports - Sports News, Scores, Rumors, Fantasy Games, and more__. 20 Jan. 2009. 04 Feb. 2009 http://ca.sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_daddy/post/NHL-decides-to-appease-critics-with-GM-fighting-?urn=nhl,135585 PPP. "Opportunism and Fighting - Pension Plan Puppets." __Pension Plan Puppets - A__ __Toronto__ __Maple Leafs blog: Blake Free in 2012!__ 24 Jan. 2009. 04 Feb. 2009 .