Enforcer Role Becoming Endangered
(from the Denver Post)
By Terry Frei
Denver Post NHL Beat Reporter
January 14, 2007 - When the Avalanche played Tampa Bay on Jan. 5 and Ian Laperriere got into a scrap, his wife, Magali, was in the Pepsi Center seats. Their sons, Zachary, 2, and Tristan, 4, were at home with a babysitter.
As the babysitter told the parents later, Zachary Laperriere saw his father going at it on television with the Lightning's Nick Tarnasky before both players went off for roughing.
"He turns around and he goes, 'Be nice, Daddy!"' Laperriere said. "That's because when the boys argue, I tell them, 'Be nice, guys, be nice!'
"At some point, I'm going to have to sit down with my older son (Tristan), but right now, he doesn't follow the game that much." Laperriere laughed, and then added, "He's into books, doesn't follow the game, doesn't want to be near a pair of skates."
Such is the lot of the NHL enforcer, a role Laperriere willingly takes on in the evolved league, in which the species - even under the redrawn parameters of the game and the job description - is endangered.
No longer is the job universally filled by a heavyweight with no other responsibilities, and often by a skater who doesn't do justice to the term. Now if teams have one player most likely to do the fighting, and not all do, that guy is likely to be taking a regular shift. And even the game's most obvious rockheads can play a bit.
I'm on record, and have been for years: The game would be better off banning fighting altogether. That always draws arguments so predictable from the pro-fighting proponents, I can rattle them off.
They include, but aren't limited to: a) the reflexive, "You don't understand the game!" which is how the NHL old guard or its parrots respond to anything that challenges the conventional standards of the North American game; b) the need to hold those who take cheap shots or who are careless with sticks accountable; c) the asinine assumption that anyone wanting to rid the game of fighting is advocating that everyone should gather at center ice, toast marshmallows and sing, "Peace Train," rather than play a hard-nosed, fiery and on-edge game; and even, d) the stand that there's nothing wrong with a little scrap every once in a while to liven up things, get fans out of their seats, and perhaps light a fire under a struggling team and try to swing momentum.
In the past, most fighting was simply mindless stupidity, and though the hardest core of the game's power structure and fandom - which sees the sport as a private club that should call for secret handshakes and passwords at the turnstiles - wouldn't admit it, the sport's gutter, tractor-pull image retarded its acceptance in the United States. And still does, to an extent.
To its credit, the NHL has legislated the worst of the fight-oriented excesses out of the game. Bench-emptying brawls are fuzzy history. Fighting is down and sometimes seems on the verge of disappearing. Now, the wake of the tightened officiating standards, the new buzzword is "physicality," and the parroting pack are arguing that the game needs more of it - and if that comes with more fighting, so be it.
I'll willingly concede that what I objected to most - the slug vs. slug sideshows that had nothing to do with the game itself - largely have disappeared from the game. Not so long ago, most fights were of that ilk, and had absolutely nothing to do with the "deterrence" rationalizations for allowing fighting in the game. (A five-minute major is "allowing" fighting.) I've said many times that if fighting involved retaliation for cheap shots - say, if anyone called for a stickwork major had to fight the other team's enforcer at center ice - that would make more sense.
That's all a long way of saying that while I still think fighting should be taken completely out of the game, I'll agree most of it serves a purpose now. The yapping, stickwork and cheap shots so often seen in college hockey, for example, is aggravating, and I'll go along with the idea that sometimes you just wish someone would pop a cheap-shot artist in the mouth (after his shield has been removed).
In other words, Laperriere's pro-fighting arguments are not without merit.
"I think there would be a lot more cheap shots," he said. "I know a lot of people don't believe that, but I'm a firm believer that the goons who were there only to fight are not there anymore. There are some tough guys out there, but they need to skate and be able to do a shift every once in a while.
"When I first broke into the league, those big guys would fight for no reason. Now, if you look at the fights around the league, there's a reason behind them."
My view remains that getting rid of fighting completely would be a huge step forward for the league, both competitively and in terms of credibility. Fighting virtually disappears in the playoffs, and the edge-of-the-seat tension sells the sport. But if a fight at least serves a reasonable purpose - and "swinging momentum" or "lighting a spark" doesn't qualify - it at least makes the game something other than a trash sport.
Terry Frei can be reached at 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com