Sunday, September 23, 2012
Hockey cures all sins?
The NHL uses “safety value” as a reason to not have harsher penalties against fighting, and fighting is typically limited to a “red light district” of players. The alternative is what happens in other leagues, which is increased stick play, and that would apply to most of its players (that is, spreading anarchy across everyone). This of course stands in contrast to the NHL in the playoffs where you have reduced fighting, and that’s because the incentive system has changed.
All that is without considering that there’s an additional point of concussions or other brain-related injuries, which would seem to suggest that whatever benefits red light districts has, if it comes at a cost of diseases to the affected parties, it’s not worth it.
But then you get to non-adults playing hockey in an organized sport. The takeaway:
Guelph sold tickets last year to people eager to watch a 16 year old fight. If he was fighting in a cage or fighting in a boxing ring, one fight would be illegal. Just add ice though, and everything’s ok. Try and keep it under ten a year? Maybe?
Junior hockey is a pretty sick sport. This is just another example of that. People who buy tickets to watch their favourite 16 year old boy fight 18, 19 and 20 year old guys are sick. It’s weird that the part of society that doesn’t suffer from this sickness is somehow willing to tolerate it, when it acts sort of sensibly in limiting the rights of minors to fight for money elsewhere. Hockey cures all sins, I guess. And renders irrelevant medical data.
There was this cool Star Trek episode where rather than fight an actual war, they fight simulations. And simulated deaths are recorded. And each side agreed to send people to actual deaths to count against the simulated deaths. They figured that this would be better for society, that buildings, structures, etc all would not be levelled. The problem is that they were doing this system for hundreds of years. It was “working” and they presumed the alternative was worse.
But, without an incentive to stop doing what they are doing, they just perpetuated the system.
Europeans boo fights because they don’t like to see fights. North American cheer fights because they like to see fights. But both regions behave like that because that’s what they are used to. They are conditioned to go-with-the-flow (inertia).
If there is fear that fighting=ejection would lead to vicious stick play, then that should be addressed as it happens. Basically, start the “war” by banning fighting, see how bad it gets, and then fix it so that fighting can end, and vicious stick plays won’t be an issue. If everyone is too scared of the alternative, then you just perpetuate what exists, and that in the end is going to be too much to handle.
Not to mention that the junior leagues model the pros, and the pros rely on the junior leagues for talent. We need a paradigm shift.
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