$0.02

(Special disclaimer: This is a post about fighting in the NHL. For excellent coverage of the issue, and perhaps some perspective, go here, here, here and/or here. Also, this post is shamefully long, so you should probably go get some coffee and find a comfortable seat.)

AP writer Ira Podell has a column up on Yahoo! Sports taking a look at the "current" issue of fighting in hockey, and I think it's a pretty interesting read. Not because it covers any new ground, really. For the most part it is a rehash of all the various arguments for and against fighting in the NHL. The thing that caught my eye, though, was a quote from NHL disciplinarian Colin Campbell regarding the Todd Fedoruk incident:

"The last time Philadelphia was in there ... the same player came out of the penalty box and went right for Jagr and hit him real hard on probably a borderline charge or a major for charging," Campbell said. "I think it's incumbent on the Rangers to protect their players in ways they can."

No, Colin, you nitwit, it is incumbent on you, and the NHL as a whole, to protect the players in any way you can. If it was, as you say, a borderline charge or a major for charging,why didn't the on-ice officials in your employ call a penalty? And if it was an offense so grievous as to require another player to punch him in the face, shouldn't it also be grievous enough to deserve some sort of suspension? Colin Campbell, in another article, has pointed to the lower number of suspensions this year as an indication that the game is getting cleaner.

While there have been other ugly moments this season, Campbell says supplemental discipline has dropped "tremendously" since the lockout.

Campbell handed out 31 supplemental suspensions in 2003-04 (not counting automatic suspensions), which dropped to 21 last season.

Amazingly, despite all the headline bad behaviour this season, only nine supplemental suspensions have been handed down this season.

I've got news for you, Colin. Improvement would be if you had issued more suspensions this year than last. Given the current state of the game and its current level of popularity in the United States, you should be putting more pressure on the players to clean up their acts, not less.

Or, let's consider for a moment that perhaps Fedoruk's hit on Jagr wasn't an illegal charge. If it was a legal hit, it was a legal hit, and everyone needs to get over it and move on. I hate Jaromir Jagr just as much as the next person, but I feel pretty confident that he can take a hit, and if he can't, then why should Todd Fedoruk be punished for it in the form of a concussive blow from the right hand of Colton Orr? In sports like football and basketball, if a team is bigger, stronger and/or more physical than your own team, you don't get to start bashing people's faces in to level the playing field. You either find a way around the oppositions physical play, whether it be toughening up and being just as physical, or you find a way around it with speed and skill. (Please note that, in this case, "physical play" and "fisticuffs" are two distinctly different things.)

Imagine, if you will, that you are watching a football game (Half of you have just stopped reading. Please come back!) in which Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher comes off the outside and levels Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning with a bone-crunching hit from the blind side. Manning is one of the NFL's biggest stars, and arguably the most important player on the Colts' roster. Now, imagine if one of the offensive linemen, on the next play, were to completely eschew his run-blocking duties and instead made a beeline straight for Urlacher and started throwing punches. Sounds absurd, right? In the NHL, it would not only be unsurprising, if would actually be expected.

And therein lies the problem. We can talk and talk (or write and write, as it were) about banning fighting or increasing the penalty for it or finding some sort of compromise, but nothing will work until the overall mentality of the players (and the idiots in charge (and the fans (and the on-ice officials who are, for the most part, grossly incompetent, thus necessitating the self-policing by the players in the first place))) changes. One of the chief arguments for keeping fighting is that, without it, there would be more cheap shots and dangerous stick infractions. How about instead, the players have enough respect for each other that they simply don't specifically try to badly injure each other? Is that too much to ask? Shouldn't simple sportsmanship, rather than a goon's fists, be enough of a deterrent?

Apparently not. The culture of incidental, gratuitous violence is so ingrained in the NHL at this point that it may be impossible to ever fully extricate it. I'm guilty of it myself, having started this here blog in the joyous delirium that followed the Great Brawl of Atlanta. This in spite of the fact that I am a rather big proponent of phasing fighting out of the league, as any right thinking person should be. That is what the league is working against, and given the people currently in charge, I'm not especially optimistic about the prospects of improvement. Although, to be fair, Gary Bettman has never seen a hockey tradition he wasn't happy to piss all over. So maybe there's hope yet.