>>>Hockey is a great game when the players are allowed to showcase their skills. If they've modified the rules to cut down on the fighting, cut down on the clutch and grab, cut down the extra unnecessary hitting, etc. I'd certainly start watching again.
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>>They have done away with all this except the fighting. However, they are really enforcing 3rd player into the fight penalties as well as instigator penalties. Also, if you fight in the last 5 minutes of regulation or OT, it is automatic suspension for the next game in addition to the usual penalties. So now you do not have the gratuitious fighting at the end once one team has accepted defeat.
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>Fighting was always a part of hockey. But since the Broad Street Bullies it became THE thing in hockey. I honestly think the NHL felt it had a better chance to sell hockey in the States that way.
>Fighting as in one-on-one will always happen in hockey, and I have no real problem with that because cheap-shots are done and retaliation will happen. To me it's human nature. I have yet to seriously watch a game this season, but obviously I should do that soon!
>

I agree with you there. Suggested ad slogan: "The NHL -- Come back, all is forgiven!" ;-)

Here is my second (and hopefully last!) hockey anecdote. When I was in college the Flyers, the famous/infamous Broad Street Bullies themselves, established an AHL farm team in Portland, Maine. Back home on school vacations I saw them play several times, as my dad had been smart enough to get in early and get relatively cheap seats near the red line and a few feet above the ice. (The players' wives and girlfriends sat nearby; all I will say there is losing teeth on the ice is apparently not a barrier to babeland). Maine was and is a distant outpost of professional sports, lower echelons, so the Mariners were embraced with gusto. It was practically an infomercial for so-called minor league sports, better than the majors in many respects.

So this one night the Mariners were playing another AHL team. I wish I remembered which one. What I do remember is Dave Schultz, the epitome of the Broad Street Bullies, was on the opposing team. He was old by hockey standards by then, slowed and scarred, and he was playing out the string. Think Crash in "Bull Durham" if a baseball analogy makes it easier. What happened there that night was what I suspect happened to him everywhere he went. He was still Dave ******* Schultz, the NHL record holder for penalty minutes in a season, most of them for fighting. He was not known for his offensive skills, which were few, or much more for his defensive skills. He was mainly known for his ability to pound an opponent senseless and bloodied.

At this point he was a lion in winter, a different man, you sensed, from the gladiator of his early career. And yet the young turks kept coming after him. You could almost sense the gears of their minds turning slowly -- punch out Dave Schultz, THE Dave Schultz, and I'm in the show.

So this night the Mariners' enforcer wannabe, probably 20 years old, big and strong, picked a fight with Schultz. Over towards the boards, off the play, Schultz must have chipped a sliver of ice onto the young turk's skates. (I do remember the young turk's name, but will leave it out because he was young at the time and because he is not the point of this story). The turk threw down his gloves and assumed a battle stance. The crowd rose in anticipation. The turk threw a punch, then another, then another. Schultz ducked or deflected the punches, then grabbed and raised Turk's jersey in such a way as to render him defenseless. He had been there before. He could have KO'ed him at that moment, left him unconscious on the ice, but he didn't. He popped the kid a couple of times, not as hard as he could have but hard enough to get the kid's attention. He gave the referee a look, the kid's jersey still firmly in place over his head. The ref came over and broke it up. Five minute majors for fighting, both players.

I felt for Schultz. It was almost like Greek drama.