Toronto Maple Leafs center John Mitchell, left, and Boston Bruins defenseman Mark Stuart fight during their N.H.L. hockey game in Boston in December.
Mitch Fritz is a 28-year-old left wing from Osoyoos, British Columbia, who stands 6 feet 8 inches and weighs 258 pounds. He has a goatee, and the knuckles on his left hand are often covered with dark scabs. He is not with the Islanders because he can score.
In his second N.H.L. game, on Nov. 1, Fritz picked a fight with Montreal’s Georges Laraque, one of the league’s most fearsome enforcers. By all accounts, Fritz held his own. He has been in three fights since, keeping a spot on the roster.
He does not play much, but Fritz considers his presence a sign of an N.H.L. trend. The number of fights is up by about 15 percent over last season and by 75 percent over three years ago, meaning that players who can fight have become more valuable.
“I don’t follow it, I don’t dissect it, but I don’t mind when it’s up,” said Fritz, an otherwise mild-mannered man who won the Man of the Year award from the American Hockey League three years ago. “It might mean more work for me down the road.”
Fighting has been an accepted part of hockey for generations. With few exceptions, every team has at least one player who can fight. Two enforcers battle, often briefly, to defuse the emotion generated by a tight, physical game, or to create some emotion.
The N.H.L. does not include a fight card in its daily packet of statistics, but Web sites like hockey-fights.com keep track, and the site has logged 351 fights this season, up from 308 through the same time last season.
Fights, labeled as such when at least one of the players involved receives a five-minute major penalty, have increased each year since the 2004-5 lockout. Through Dec. 23, 2005, there were 201 fights; through Dec. 23, 2006, there were 220.
“It seems like it’s coming full circle again,” said Jason Travers, a St. Louis Blues fan who in 1995 created hockey-fights.com, which unapologetically lists fights (often adding blow-by-blow descriptions) and includes videos of the better battles.
Through Dec. 23, 2003, in the season before the lockout, the site listed 341 fights. That was before the N.H.L. instituted a series of rules changes intended to crack down on late-game brawls, and on clutching and grabbing so the league’s premier players would have more room to score.
Colin Campbell, the N.H.L.’s director of hockey operations, said that stick fouls like cross-checking and slashing were down substantially. But he acknowledged that fighting had increased, and, like many others in hockey, he has a few theories.
First, Campbell said, fighting — and rough stuff in general — is less prevalent than when he played in the N.H.L. from the mid-1970s to the mid-80s. (He recalls coating his hair with Vaseline before games so that opponents would not be able to pull it.)
Those were the days when two-man fights often became donnybrooks, and hardly anyone said no when challenged to a fight. Many enforcers could barely skate, let alone score. Players are more versatile now, and they became a tighter fraternity during the lockout.
“Coming out of the lockout,” Campbell said, “I don’t know if there was a lot of animosity.”
Meaning that there is more animosity now than there was three years ago.
When told what Campbell had said, Boston Bruins forward Shawn Thornton, who was in his 10th fight of the season on Tuesday against the Devils, smiled and replied: “It’s a theory. But I’d fight my sister if it came down to it. I’m friends with some of the guys I throw the gloves down with. If I start thinking who’s on the other side, then I’m not playing the way I can.”
Mike Rupp, the Devils forward who fought with Thornton, said: “After the lockout, they opened up the game more. Maybe the game’s faster, so there are bigger hits. With speed picking up, guys are laying hits on the skill players from the other teams.”
That means there has sometimes been a need to even the score, which is when fights tend to break out. Thornton picked a fight in the second period with Rupp after Rupp delivered crushing (but legal) checks on Boston’s Dennis Wideman and Vladimir Sobotka.
Campbell said he understood why that happened — “It’s considered a safety valve,” he said of fighting in general — but he said he did not think it was necessary for an enforcer to even the score when clean checks later in the game could deliver the same message.
Establishing a physical presence works for some teams, even in today’s N.H.L. With the blessing of Brian Burke, then the general manager, the 2006-7 Anaheim Ducks amassed 71 fighting majors, far and away the most in the league. They went on to win the Stanley Cup. Burke has moved to Toronto, but Anaheim, which has an 18-14-3 record, has already been in 40 fights this season, sharing the league lead with the Vancouver Canucks.
Some teams do not feel the need to drop the gloves, most notably the Detroit Red Wings, who won the Stanley Cup last season for the 11th time despite being in only 21 fights. (They have been in a league-low seven this season.)
“I just don’t think that’s part of our game plan,” goaltender Ty Conklin, in his first year with the Red Wings, said recently in a conference call with reporters. “You know, there are some teams that you know they feel that they get an advantage if they can intimidate the other team, and we just don’t have guys like that. The guys are not intimidated out there.”
Generally, one fight does not lead to another, although Andre Deveaux of Toronto and Krys Barch of Dallas were in two fights in their game Tuesday and were thrown out of the game.
“Lots of times, the fights don’t mean anything,” said Washington Capitals forward Donald Brashear, 36, who is considered one of the most ferocious tough guys in hockey history. “Guys just fight for fun, for pride. That’s about it.”
Quite often, only a few punches are thrown before the fighters grapple and fall to the ice in a heap. Even with those few punches, they will probably be slamming their fists into the other player’s helmet.
“I’d rather have scars on my knuckles than my face,” Thornton said.
The knuckles on Thornton’s right hand — his “throwing” hand, as the fight fans like to call it — are covered with scabs. He considers it an occupational hazard. He knows what the Bruins expect him to do, and he is doing it.
No comments:
Post a Comment