I hate to get on hockey’s case again but here we have the Vancouver Province trying to decide who was the best fighter of all time.

They have done it like a tennis draw matching pairs, making up winners until there are two left then telling us who was best. Even if they can tell who would have beaten whom – a dubious assumption indeed – this method has all the frailties of match play in golf. That never tells you with accuracy who was best in the tournament but who never lost a match.

Now if the “seed” had been different the ultimate winner might have lost in the first round. So even if the Vancouver Province could accurately predict the outcome of each “fight”, if the draw had been different it probably would have produced a different winner.

Last Friday I was having dinner at the Red Lion, our favourite restaurant, and there being no hockey game  televised the station (TSN? ESPN?) elected to spend about an hour featuring hockey fights! Not first class goals … or miraculous saves … but fights. It reminds one of the old saw “I went to the fights and a hockey game broke out.”

The excuse offered is that this is a fast, hard hitting game and the boys have to let off steam! This is crap. Basketball, with no padding, is a fast and relatively hard hitting game and fights are simply not tolerated. Nor are they tolerated in Rugby, Football or Soccer.

Why is fighting encouraged in hockey? Because owners think the fans love them. And they’re probably right. We are a violent people and part of a violent species of animal. The Vancouver Province didn’t do its series without knowing what fan reaction would be … nor did the TV station run all those fights just for the hell of it. When the fans sit on their hands instead of cheering, when they walk out rather than asking for more – then and then only will the fights stop.

I guess when you think about it, given the cost of going to a hockey game maybe the fan is right to demand a little more bang for his buck.

What this tells us though is that Hockey is minor league, bush league, compared to the sports which penalize, sometimes harshly, those who break the rules.