Ben wrote: >>>Hey a fight makes a good spectacle.<<< Vicki replied: >>I definitely am in the minority here! Maybe if you had sons out there playing you would feel differently about that part of the sport. I can hardly be detached about seeing someone lose an eye or lose their motor capability, whether it's my son or not! Yes, of course play goes on and it's a contact/collision sport! In a THN article Jeff Libby said, if he had to do it all over again he wished he would have worn the shield.<< Ben replied: >Maybe if I was out of school and had kids I'd understand better. I do know that parents, especially mothers, have an overprotectiveness about them. And I've changed my mind somewhat, I used to think college hockey should drop the game DQ for fighting, now I think that's fine. On USCHO, a fellow Mav fan pointed out that in colleges, fights are usually the last resort of retalition and usually only come about after a ref loses control of a game due to non-calls earlier. > As far as the eye thing, hockey fights rarely last long enough for serious > damage to be done, and those that do are the exception to the rule, not > the rule themselves. I don't think you should regulate something based on > a minority of the cases, unless that minority becomes significant, which I > guess is a debateable %. You sound like the % you'd say is significant is > a lot lower than what most people would.< > If I'm wrong, please correct me, but I think Vicki's response was a non-sequitur, and a mixing of issues. I believe Jeff Libby's injury had nothing to do with a fight. I agree with Ben that a fight is a spectacle, and that (at least in the games I see) players are rarely injured in fights. Where I differ with some folks is that they believe that it's an inevitable, harmless, or useful spectacle, or a spectacle that enhances the game, while I believe that it is a useless spectacle that detracts from the game. I also agree with Ben on the game DQ for fighting, and also with the local high school (Massachusetts, don't know whether it's a league, team, or state) regulation that fighting is a game misconduct AND you sit the next game. [. . .] Clay HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.