Hockey Fights!

Well, I suppose I should ask you to study the picture up above before I really get into what I feel compelled to say.  Sooooo, please do…

My feeling after watching the corresponding video was:  Ouch!  Ouch!  And then ouch!

Now, trust me:  that I can appreciate how countless 20-something fans can really get into hockey fights.  Frankly, so did I when I was much younger.  In fact, I can totally understand how hockey fans love to see a lot of rough and tumble things as they watch a game and cheer for their favorite team —  including the big, bone-crushing body-checks, especially when these come at the expense of a not-so-well-liked foe.  Ya, I can appreciate all of that.

Oh, I’m not about to tell you that I’ve grown-up, and that that’s the reason I’m not so enthralled anymore with the likes of fighting or even those big hits.  Naw, it has nothing to do with me turning 30, 40, 50 or the 104-years old am right now. 

No, what happened to me is that I got deeper and deeper into coaching as I got older, and I especially got more into helping players at the developmental levels of our game.

This aside, however…  A lot of years ago I had a number of minor pro coaching interviews.  And, let me tell you, I’d  have turned a pro team loose back then, IF it meant changing a game’s momentum or exciting our hometown fans.  (Make no mistake about it:  the pro game — especially in some smaller minor league markets — is all  about putting fannies in the seats and bringing the fans to their feet. And I could have gone along with that way back when,  as much as I go for the more stylish flow of an international game nowadays.)

But, as I said moments ago, I’m not coaching the pros.  No, instead my job over all these years has been to guide young players towards their maximum potential.  And, that means I had to help them be successful through a number of levels before they’d have the chance to even think about the pros.

I mean, young players have to move through all the youth hockey levels, they have to play high school and/or juniors, and many of them will have to show their stuff at the collegiate level before they get a  pro sniff.  And, a player is NOT going to ever get that sniff — frankly, he’s never going to get ice-time at any of the lower levels — if he plays for himself, if he plays without discipline, and if he kills his team with needless penalties.  (Actually, the types of penalties we’re talking about here are so severe at the lower levels that an undisciplined player is going to be suspended or booted from his league in pretty short order.)

Again, this is NOT me being a bleeding heart or anything; I’ve already stated that I’d have gone for the rough stuff if I was coaching elsewhere.  But, since I coached where I coached through most of my career, the best thing I could do was to conscientiously guide the guys in my charge, and help them make their ways up hockey’s ladder without incident.

I mentioned earlier about the big, sensational body-checks…  Not that I’m against these.  However, as one pro player famous for rough play once told me, “You can’t run around looking to make the big hit, or you’ll look foolish.  Instead you just take them when they come.”  In further talking on the subject, he mentioned that, “The highlight videos you see weren’t taken from one game.”

Personally, I think that some supposedly big hits can be risky.  In other words, they can be too much of a gamble, whereby a player might win big by completing the body-check, but he might also lose big-time whenever he misses.

Oh, and another thing…  I hope players (and parents) appreciate that coaches — at all levels — want control.  Ya, sure, I personally might have an ego that requires my players to toe the mark.  More importantly, however, I and every other coach on the planet has his neck in a noose — as in having to answer to GMs, program heads, athletic directors and  league authorities.  And, like it or  not, every player on a team is representing his coach, his mates, his league and his sport.  Said yet another way:  I (and my program) ain’t going to look idiotic because of a single, loose cannon player.  Naw…  If it’s him or me, you can just guess who is going down the river first.

All that said, let me put the amateur level of our game in a slightly different perspective…  You see, I usually look for a “teaching moment” whereby some player (and hopefully one that isn’t mine) does something to disgrace himself.  (It happens often enough.)  With that, I’ll talk to my kids about their love of the game — or, more specifically, their respect for the game they supposedly love.  It’ll be a relaxed, “shooting the bull” kind of talk, within which I try to draw from them a true feeling for their game, and a sense of how they almost always show their respect — or disrespect — anytime they’re at a rink.

Finally, I’m sure not everyone goes along with me on all the above.  However, it’s all stuff I really feel needs saying.

Want to share your feelings on the subject?  Just leave a comment down below.

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