Dropping the Gloves

The Sporting Life:

The Public Professor’s Sports Column

To fight or not to fight, that is the question.

Fighting has been so much a part of North American professional hockey for so long, that it is often the first thing that comes to mind when the sport is mentioned to a casual observer.  And compared to other professional sports, the NHL takes what can only be described as a very soft approach, effectively allowing the fisticuffs to continue?

That violence remains firmly enmeshed in the NHL was on display last Monday night at Madison Square Garden. Playing in the same division and just across the Hudson River from each other, the New York Rangers and New Jersey Devils are fairly fierce rivals.  Both franchises have a history of going at it, including some spats earlier this year.  Monday’s eruption, however, was nothing short of pre-meditated violence.

The Devils submitted their starting lineup first, as is customary for the visiting team.  It included the names of a few goons you wouldn’t normally expect to see starting.  The Rangers responded by sending out their own ruffian-filled starting lineup, which featured defenseman Stu Bickel taking the opening faceoff.

Stu Bickel never takes the opening faceoff.

Everyone knew what was coming before it happened.  The teams knew it, the crowd knew it, and the announcers knew it.  When the ref dropped the puck at center ice,  Stu Bickel and Devil Ryan Carter barely made any effort to conduct a faceoff before going at each other.  In no time, six of the ten players (not counting the goalies) were trading blows.

While Bickel grabbed the spotlight by going at Carter, on either side of center ice, Rangers Brandon Prust and Michael Rupp tangled with Devils Cam Janssen and Eric Boulton.

I’m not embedding video of the fight for two reasons.  First, I don’t know how.  I’ve really gotta figure out how to do stuff like that.  But more importantly, I have no interest in turning this site into a lurid gawk-fest.  There’s no shortage of that on the internet already, and besides, you all know how to find the fight if you want to watch it.  Instead, I want to consider a very practical question.

Is fighting good for the NHL’s business?

The NHL is by far and away the least popular of the four major sports in the United States.  The National Football League reigns supreme.  Major League Baseball is well behind, the fading starlette of the bunch.  The National Basketball Association long ago left the NHL behind, and even once threatened to displace baseball, but now seems securely locked in third.  Hockey, meanwhile, is ghettoized in a distant fourth place, barely able to get its games shown on major networks.

There are many reasons to explain this: few Americans grow up playing the game; competition from the other three established team spectator sports is difficult to overcome; the lack of media exposure limits growth; and indeed, most Americans don’t even really understand how this Canadian game is played.

However, many commentators believe that the endemic violence keeps people away and impedes the NHL’s business growth.

But I wonder if that’s actually true.  In an era when grotesque brutality has helped make Mixed Martial Arts the fastest growing sport in America, and violence plays a crucial role in keeping football the nation’s most popular sport, does fighting really explain why the NHL continues to languish in fourth place, and may one day soon drop to fifth behind soccer?

Clearly, the NHL doesn’t think so.  For example, just last year when Air Canada CEO Calin Rovinescu was disgusted by a sickening fight between the Boston Bruins and Montreal Canadians, he sent a private memo to the league.  Clean up the sport, he said, or Air Canada will consider withdrawing its sponsorship.

In response, the NHL went public with Rovinescu’s memo, chided him for meddling in the league’s private affairs, and essentially told him to take his business elsewhere if he didn’t like it.

Air Canada backed down.

And it’s not just the league.  Many players also support the violence.  When Dr. Rajendra Kale, the interim editor-in-chief of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, called upon the NHL to stop the violence, Vancouver Canucks defenseman Kevin Bieksa responded:

“I think fighting is part of the game.  [Kale’s] a doctor and we’re making him a little bit of money on the side.  He gets to fix us up.  We’ll let him do his job, and he should let us do our job.”

Personally, I’d like to do away with the fighting.  But I think we’re kidding ourselves if we think violence is the reason why the NHL is an also-ran in the U.S. spectator sports market.

Indeed, the United States has one of the most martial and violent cultures in the developed world.  Thus, it may very well be that the NHL’s position at the bottom of the sports heap comes despite the game’s violence, not because of it.