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Civilized Insanity It is the worst thing to ever happen in the NHL. I’m not referring to the lock-out season or even the time that Kris Draper’s kid took a dump in the Stanley Cup. This is something far worse. It began in 1992 and professional hockey in North America has suffered for it ever since. You guessed right. I’m talking about the instigator rule.
Hockey is supposed to be a self-policing game. It used to be about honor and answering the bell when you crossed the line. If you made a cheap shot on a team’s superstar or called some player’s mom a slut while on the ice, even if it was true, an enforcer was going to make you pay, voluntarily or otherwise. There wouldn’t have been a Wayne Gretzky without a Marty McSorley. Everybody knew to keep their paws off of Number 99 or else they’d have to pay in bruises and blood. Clark Gillies was so good at his job that he barely had to fight at all for all the fear he inflicted. Craig MacTavish once told Tony Twist that he didn’t even need to show up at games; all they had to do was put a cardboard cut-out of him on the bench and everyone would be too afraid to do anything else but play by the rules. Indeed, “the Code” that exists in the NHL is what Twist once referred to as “civilized insanity.”
With the instigator rule, the NHL essentially removed the civility but retained the insanity. It states:
The aggressor in an altercation shall be the player who continues to throw punches in an attempt to inflict punishment on his opponent who is in a defenseless position or who is an unwilling combatant. A player must be deemed the aggressor when he continues throwing and landing punches in a further attempt to inflict punishment and/or injury on his opponent who is no longer in a position to defend himself.
This basically means that if one player goes after another in retribution for past or recent cheap stunts on the ice, the “instigator” in the fight is penalized, while the guy who deserved it is not. It has the misguided intention of courting the suburban mini-van crowd that might be put off by the violence in hockey, who instead take their kids to watch professional wrestling and ultimate fighting. In reality, all it’s really done is handed the game to potty-mouthed agitators making tawdry attempts to draw penalties against their opponents by goading them into throwing the first punch. Even worse, it’s given rise to the worst tact known to modern professional sports outside of cheating: turtling. Gone are the days when your own teammates would kick your ass for verbally coercing a guy into dropping his gloves, only to cower and refuse to fight back. This precious rule meant to lure soccer moms and their offspring into hockey rinks has seen to that.
And for all those intentions, what has it accomplished? Fighting isn’t gone from hockey; it’s simply been reduced to a clown-like side show. Poll after poll has shown that upwards of seventy to eighty percent of fans like the fights, even while they’ve become almost blatantly staged. Nowadays, if two players want to challenge one another, they have to apply in triplicate to Colin Campbell six weeks in advance in order to get permission to tug on each others jerseys. To quote Dave Schultz, it is one of the stupidest things I have ever seen.
The recent tragic death of OHA defenseman Don Sanderson as the result of a head injury that followed a fight has once again refueled debate, as if there were not a billion other reasons that large men smashing into each other at thirty miles an hour could be killed. But for all of the arguments against it, fighting prevents more injuries than it causes. Men that once would have thought twice about putting star players at risk from fear of pain and humiliation at the hands of an enforcer now fly in the face of every notion of sportsmanship. They have nobody to answer to except the zebras that dole out fines and suspensions, as if those things ever taught anybody a good, hard lesson. It’s like telling a regular person to pay you fifty cents and take a week off from work. Even fining coaches for the on-ice behavior of their players has made little difference to guys with no respect for the rules, both written and unwritten.
The height of hockey’s popularity in the US was during the years that the Colorado Avalanche and Detroit Red Wings had a rivalry between them that was so fierce, it was nicknamed “the Blood Feud.” People turned up at rinks in droves to watch it play out. You can argue that the potential for brawls wasn’t part of the appeal for those crowds, but I it wouldn’t be honest. Whether we’ve gone to coliseums in Rome or movie theaters to watch shit get blown up, human beings have always had a craving for watching violence. It’s better we satisfy it in contained venues than take it out on each other with disastrous and punishing consequences.
Hockey is a niche sport and I’ve got no problem if it stays that way. We fans may not be many, at least in the US as compared to Canada, but we’re infinitely more passionate about our game than any sport you can think of. Let the other fans hypocritically congratulate themselves for their refinement while they watch hours of slow-motion injury porn in playback and hope for brutal crashes at NASCAAR races. Just return honor, balance and dignity that used to grace my game. Get rid of the instigator rule. Bring back the civilized insanity.
Bonus Video:
Shawn Thornton vs. Riley Cote © Chippy McGuinness 2009. All rights reserved.
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