Charlie talks about additional sanctions that can be imposed upon a player
by the school or coach.  This is a good point.  After two ugly bench-clearing
brawls between Northeastern and Lowell in 1988 and between Northeastern and
Merrimack in 1989, Hockey East Commissioner Stu Haskell decided to come down
hard upon the combatants and issued additional suspensions on top of those
mandated by the NC$$.  In each case, one player was suspended for a long time
for particularly reprehensible acts.  NU's Peter Schure was initially
suspended indefinitely by the league for striking an official in the Lowell
brawl.  I was witness to both brawls.   Although the actual facts were that
Schure was being restrained by a linesman while one of Schure's teammates was
doubleteamed by two Lowell players right in front of him, and Schure did not
actually hit the official but just threw him to the ice so he could get to
his teammate's aid, there is still the necessity of upholding the integrity
of officials and so the indefinite suspension was deserved if only to send a
message to other players.  (Schure returned after about a month and a half.)
This was very similar to the Jaromir Jagr case in the NHL in the need to
protect officials.
 
In the other case, NU's Keith Cyr was suspended for a long time by the league
and then, I believe, for the remainder of the season by the school when he
started NU's 2nd brawl in one calendar year by jumping off the bench to
crosscheck in the head a Merrimack player who was sitting in the penalty box.
 
Hockey East has done a good job of controlling violence and there have been
no more such brawls.  HE now imposes an additional mandatory game suspension
in addition to any NC$$ suspensions if a DQ is incurred for fighting.  This
has been in effect for several years, and the result has been that fighting
has been almost completely eliminated.  I do not believe I have seen any
fighting incidents in HE since at least last season.
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Mike Machnik    [log in to unmask]   mikem@{beanpot,bubba}.ma30.bull.com