Rules, Impact of hardware change fighting on the NHL

 Opponents of the Red Wings from Detroit knew better than to mess with Steve Yzerman. Take a cheap to him - shots or one of the other wings, indeed - and you must respond to Bob Probert and, a few years later, Darren McCarty.

It was a code on the ice of justice, and is shown in an efficient manner over the years players such as Probert, McCarty and Derek Boogaard built careers warm dishes served to punish the hits.

But the sudden death of the Boogaard Friday, five months after a concussion to end of season, and the decision of his family to donate his brain to the project of Boston University which found that Probert had signs of brain injury resulting from blows to the head, provides an additional examination in the place of fighting in the NHL.

"I think that the League has done a good job." They try to limit the head blows, "Tampa Bay Lightning center Nate Thompson said Monday. "I think they can (fighting ban entirely).". This is part of the game. It is a physical sport, and it has always been. If they accept that out of the game which takes part in the history of the game. ?

As football, hockey is a controlled set of violence. Players are skating full speed around a rink closed and collisions - some intentional, some non - are required to occur. The arbitrators are to ensure that transgressions are punished. But when they do not, or may not happen, this is where the players take things in hand.

this October 16, 2001, file photo shows the Buffalo Sabres right Rob Ray to fighting (32) with defenseman Marc Moro Nashville Predators (16) in the second period of a game in the NHL at HSBC arena in BuffaloN.Y. Fighting is so much part of the culture of NHL that there is a special category of players dedicated to boulot dirty game.

Big Bad Bruins in Boston brought the rude style on the ice, and broad Street bullies the Flyers are regarded as models for scrupulous modern. What people forget is that the Flyers have begun only beat up people because the owner Ed Snider tired other gathering on his teams.

"It's combat eclipsed way talent had us on the team," Bob "the Hound", said Kelly. "We have no talent, win us nothing.

But the Flyers have won, the Stanley Cup from lifting in 1974 and ' 75.

In the 1980s, each team had an executor or two whose main role is to protect his teammates by any means necessary, whenever necessary.

"These guys are so big and strong," said Dave "the Hammer" Schultz, who often wrapped his hands in the band protection and set a record for NHL season 1974-75 with 472 penalty minutes. "We were not great and strong." I could punch a guy, hit him right in the nose, and he is not going to get a concussion. "But I do form Pierce."

Advances in equipment and rules changes raised the level of combat. Schultz said that he would never have shut in shoulder - or head the first opponents because he could have hurt him. But players now wear helmets with facial and football-like padding.

Players can now spend up to blue lines by their opponents, increasing the speed of the game. And as all other sports, the players were oversized.

"The game received very quickly, much faster that it was never," said Stan Fischler, MSG hockey analyst and historian of the NHL. "And the players are much larger that they have never been if collisions are therefore at a higher speed.

The NHL tried to limit the damage caused by the fighting, the ejection and suspend the players leaving the bench for a fight. It also adopted the "instigator" rule, slapping a two-minute minor penalty to the player who started the fight - although some say that the rule has caused more problems than good, because it is not necessarily punish the initial troublemaker.