A major hockey player may have had brain injuries because of his tendency to brawl. What do you think about the culture of hockey and its encouragement of fighting on the ice (or at least turning a blind eye to this more than other sports do)? Or perhaps all sports encourage violence in some way. Can anything be done about this? Should anything be done? Make sure you read both pages.
Have you ever seen small children throwing away their gloves in the pursuit of beating the hell out of their hockey opponents? I suggest you haven’t, but if you have, I believe you must have told yourself: “Jesus, those kids don’t know how to control their anger!” This is not a coincidence. Since our early childhood we have been taught that we must control our temperament. There are of course exceptions like fighting sports, but even there are rules to be kept. Hence, regardless to the fact that hockey fighting probably also has its rules; I believe it shouldn’t play a role in ice hockey anymore. Wilderness lies in all of us, but nobody wants to see blood on ice no matter if it comes from hard tackles or emotional hockey fights; it simply has nothing to do with hockey.
ReplyDeleteHowever some players, even Bob’s wife stay enthusiastic about the fighting. They accuse heavy tackles for being the single biggest reason for all those unpleasant brain effects described in this article. Obviously, fans too stay enthusiastic about the fighting, because it keeps them entertained and excited. As we can see many people would probably like to keep fighting as part of the game and therefore I think its fate should be determined differently than the fate of brutal tackles. For a regular hockey fight to set off there must be the desire of both players to fight. However for a nasty tackle to realize you only need the desire of one. Thus I don’t think IIHF (The International Ice Hockey Federation) should vote on the maintenance of fighting in ice hockey, but players themselves should have a vote. If the majority of players agree on maintaining the ritual, I don’t see any further problems being associated with this topic.
Branislav Skocek IB3
As lot of researches proved, brawls could degenerate brain tissue. This is sort of a problem to sports where it is inevitable (or at least it was not avoided till now) as American football and hockey. Fighting is something that encourages many to watch the sports as well as it could discourage others. Indeed, there are some players their main priority is to “get rid of” opponent team best players and that is something beyond the normal thinking. Some players are more pugilist than playmakers. “How much is the hockey and how much is the fighting we do not really know,” said Dr. Robert Cantu.
ReplyDeleteMany players after their death donated their brains for further experiments. Some of them showed evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (or C.T.E.). This is not a disease for long-retired players as Reggie Fleming (who played also before helmet invention). Some top world players suffer from this disease as well and had to miss significant time after sustaining concussions. There is a possibility of C.T.E. to hockey players and while they are still relatively young. But scientist are quite skeptic about it. “But we can’t take steps tomorrow based on what we’re finding out today.” It needs much more than finding the problem.
One of the most interesting stories is the one about Bob Probert. He is one of whose fists were known as weapons among opponents. He was not an average player as well as he was not an average person. He got together 3,300 carrier penalty minutes – 11 pages were needed to list them all. He was rated the greatest enforcer in hockey history (2007). On the other hand he scored 163 goals but that is not why people remember him (what is a pity in my point of view). As a person, he drank heavily, he used cocaine – that is why he had to spend 90 days in prison and was suspended for whole 94-95 season. He also had some driving citations, bar fights and assaults on police officers.
But that is not the point. He died on 5th of July on his boat near his home. The diagnosis said: heart failure + 80% blockade of the left coronary artery. Probert donated his brain to further experiments and has shown chronic traumatic encephalopathy (and was first to shown after death)! Tests made after the death showed drug abuse, impulse control and impaired memory in the years before e died – disease contributed to it. On the other hand Probert did not have C.T.E. develop more than other football players of similar age but his widow said that he exhibited memory loss and tendency to lose his temper in final years. “In my heart of hearts, I do not believe fighting is what did this to Bob,” said Dani Probert (his widow). “It was hockey – all the checking and hits, things like that.” She encourages others to donate brains and she raise awareness about the possible health risks of head trauma.
According to my opinion, I am against the fighting. I do not think that it is necessary. Hockey is not about comparing the strength of individuals, it is a team cooperation based on sport. There are other sports for this. If you want to see people fighting, go and see boxing. I hope it would be banned in hockey; the worst thing is it needs much more loss on human lives till it comes to action. Well, it may entertain some people and attract them to hockey, but is it worth it? It makes no good. It wound and cause health problems that cannot be healed. If one likes others being hurt, he is ill. That is not normal for human entity.
Hockey is a game that I grew up with. Already as a seven years old boy I was a regular recipient of the hockey magazine and had several posters of Slovak hockey players. It was my father who showed me the passion of hockey, who often called me Dominik Hasek (the best goalkeeper of all times). During the most successful times of the Slovak hockey team I lived in Prague. . My life was all about watching and talking hockey with my friends. But I also wished to play hockey, I was already fed up with shooting a tennis ball into my desk. Unfortunately in this case, I didn’t find my dad’s support. When there was an enrolment to our local hockey team, he had refused to sign me in since he regarded hockey to be too dangerous. Big hits, fights and injuries are inseparable part the fastest collective sport in the world, hockey. The article is about these dangerous areas of hockey, more precisely it is about a long time NHL player called Brad Probert and consequences of his brutal playing style onto his health.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, we should differentiate ordinary hockey players from the so called enforcers. Guys like Brad Probert have a minimum of playing time, they usually get on the ice to protect the teams star players, spirit up their teammates by winning a fight and mainly to cheer up the crowd. In fact, in NHL there are many fans that go to hockey only because of the fights since they find them much more faster, emotional and brutal than boxing matches . Brad was a master in his area of expertise, watching his fights on the internet I gained an impression that he wouldn’t even be afraid to face a legendary boxer like Muhammad Ali. But what do these two guys have in common are brain problems that started to appear after their retirement. It is not a coincidence that major fighters of the two most brutal sports suffer from these problems. But when facing the question whether Brads fighting tendency had caused his brain trauma, I share his wife’s opinion. Moreover, Brad didn’t have any symptoms of this disease and he was even kidding about it, he died because of a heart attack that was probably caused by his drinking habits. In others words, Muhammad Ali may have brain problems caused by fighting since in box the main aim is to hit your opponents head, but Brad certainly didn’t have a brain trauma from his 240 fights in 15 seasons, in hockey you win by the number of goals, not by the number of head hits. Furthermore Brad was the one to win the fights, he received a hit into his head very rarely.
I would put down Brads brain trauma to another part of hockey, hits. Players in NHL race to destroy their opponents by a major hit, many players are literally knocked out of the game and suffer brain shakes like Sidney Crosby did. To me, the real problems arises when the so called enforcers start hitting the star players into their heads , what may result in severe injuries that will keep them out of the game for several weeks. By this I mean the shoulder on head hits, especially when the “victim” is looking onto the ice.
To make my point clear, I don’t see any problem in hockey fights because players can independently choose whether they will join them and more importantly they entertain people. Head hits are the real problem that should be solved by Gary Battman (the head of the NHL), it is unacceptable that the most talented players should suffer because of brutality of the enforcers. Of course there are penalties for hits onto players head, but I believe that that it simply isn’t enough, actually it’s a crime to injure someone on purpose (in order to weaken your opponent). Consequently if the amount oh head hits would decrease, even the possibility of having brain trauma after ending your career should be lower. Probably it was a good decision that my dad didn’t sign me into hockey team, what if I would have become the best player in the world and some kind of an enforcer would “nail” me, giving me a brain trauma.
In my opinion, fights should not be tolerated in professional hockey. The fact that there are cases of severe brain injuries prove just that. Some people consider fighting in hockey to be fun and "a part of the sport" but i think otherwise. That's not what the sport is about. Certainly, there is a competitive edge when playing and a player can get angry when his buddy gets body checked, but that's when the referees should step in and interfere. Besides, if a fan enjoys watching the fights there are plenty of sports that revolve around fighting and fighting only, for example boxing, wrestling or kickbox.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the wife of the hockey player the article was about, Bob Probert, claims that it wasn't the fighting that caused his brain injury but the body checks and hits in hockey. I think that a player who "enjoys" and seeks out fights on the ice as much as this player did will try to hit more aggressively and play a lot harder than normal players because they think they can provoke a fight. If we were to regulate the fighting, maybe even ban it, we could make some of these players play safer and hopefully same more players from brain injury.
@ Ondrej Bilcik
ReplyDeleteI understand that fights and hard hits in professional sports, such as NHL or NFL, cause life-long injuries to players but it is difficult for the league officials to ban it completely. Among four major North American sports, NHL is the one that has the least number of fans and viewers. If the NHL officials were to ban fights and somehow limit the number of collisions the popularity of professional hockey would further decline. I don’t want to make officials seem like monsters without any morals but they simply cannot ban fights or big hits. All they can do is pass some rules that would limit the number of hits to the head as well as hits from the behind and blindside hits. I am sure that they are working on new designs of protective guards in order to make players safer.
I, as a fan of the NFL know that football has been facing similar problems for some time. Even with NFL’s popularity its officials cannot totally ban big collisions and hits. They have passed some rules that ban hits to the defenseless ball-carrier or limit the helmet-to-helmet hits, which may be career or even life threatening. Officials have been fining players that disobeyed the rules and believe me those fines weren’t low. They also work on researches on how to further protect players from concussions or brain damage.
I have to say that neither hockey nor football would be the same without collisions or fights. However, I feel awful about those players who are damaged for the rest of their lives because of those hits.