I guess when I titled my Friday UM/MSU box score "round 1," I was
sending an omen...
 
I listened to some of the game (thanks Drew McCaughey and Ken Kal for
your wonderful calls of michigan hockey...) but flipped the radio off
at the empty net goal in favor of the Mich/Duke B-Ball game, so I
didn't hear of the "fight" afterwards until I read this morning's
Detroit Free Press.
 
I've been saying for the past two years that shaking hands after the
hockey game, while sportsmanlike and generally good, is dangerous.
For the past 2 1/2 hours, two groups of ~20 players have hit each
other with sticks, bashed each other into the boards, and have gener-
ally gotten _real_ mad at each other.  So let's send them all off onto
the ice to shake hands.  Smart.  Really smart.
 
It's a shame that things like this have to happen.  Whether or not it
was a "big" brawl is irrelevant.  This makes twice in three years that
Michigan and Michigan State have gotten into full-team events.  Sad.
Really sad.  If, as Terry wrote, Cam Stewart really did start this,
then he too should be suspended for a game.  Period.  Let's put a
stop to these events that push hockey into the bowels of American
sports.
 
Sorry, but I hate to see these things happen.  My solution: _enforce_
the rule that at the end of the period, _one_ team leaves the bench to
skate off the ice and the other teams stays put until the first team
is completely off the ice.  (This was brought on by the 1991 UM/MSU
brawl at the Joe).  This is a good policy-but one that is not being
enforced (at Yost Friday, both teams left the bench and at least at the
end of the second were _really_ close to having another brawl--a couple
of players were pushing each other around.)  And, and I am sorry for
this loss of sportsmanship, let's stop the shaking of hands after the
game.  (Hockey is the only major sport left that does this regularly).
 
Oh well, enough of my haranguing.  I'm wasting time where I should be
writing 680x0 assembler code due this week...
 
One last thing--
I'm not against fighting in hockey, I'm against _unnecessary_ and
nonspontaneous fighting in hockey...
 
 
Next week the Wolverines take on Kent State...C-YA at Yost!
 
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Roger L. Spurgeon               [log in to unmask]     |_  \    /  _|
Michigan Engineering `94                                 | \ \  / / |
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MICHIGAN WOLVERINE HOCKEY  --  1991/2 CCHA CHAMPIONS!   _| | \  / | |_
DETROIT RED WINGS -- 1991/2 NORRIS DIVSION CHAMPIONS!   |__|  \/  |__|