Damien Cox: COVID-19 might do what common sense couldn’t … take fighting out of hockey

Nicolas Deslauriers could yet go down in hockey history.

Deslauriers, in case you hadn’t noticed, was leading the NHL in fighting this season before the coronavirus forced a halt in competition March 12. Playing for the awful Anaheim Ducks, 27th in the standings but tops in team scraps, the 29-year-old left winger had accumulated 14 fights in 59 games.

Nashville’s Austin Watson was second with seven fights, so it’s pretty clear Deslauriers was en route to capturing whatever honour those in the hockey fighting business would bestow upon a player for such an achievement.

He’s a tough customer, no question about it. He may also end up in possession of that theoretical championship belt for good. Hockey’s John L. Sullivan, as it were.

What common sense, sportsmanship, brain injuries, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, tragic deaths and a massive upgrade in the speed at which NHL competition is waged couldn’t accomplish, it appears a global pandemic could finally get done.

Get rid of fighting in hockey.

The NHL is the only significant hockey league in North America still trying to complete its 2019-20 regular season and playoffs. The Canadian Hockey League gave up long ago and cancelled the Memorial Cup tournament, and the American Hockey League cancelled the rest of its season earlier this week.

Commissioner Gary Bettman said this week he can’t even conceive of cancelling the NHL season, a statement motivated as much by concern over the status of the NHL’s television contracts than anything else. Assuming Bettman gets his way and the NHL starts up again in July or August, it stands to reason it will do so with a variety of different rules and regulations.

One of them, almost certainly, will be a ban on bare-knuckle fighting.

It seems incomprehensible, even for the NHL, to stage games amidst the threat of COVID-19 while allowing players to grab ahold of each other in close quarters and begin to exchange punches that could draw blood, break noses, dislodge teeth and send spittle and mouth guards flying, all with linesman trying to break up the brawl. It doesn’t take Dr. Theresa Tam to go on television and gently suggest this would violate safe distancing rules to understand fighting in hockey with this pandemic hanging over our heads is doubly dangerous no matter what thoughtful counter-argument the UFC’s Dana White might offer.

For some time, it has been unclear how a number of contact sports could possibly resume play without a COVID-19 vaccine. All will almost certainly have to employ unprecedented safeguards of some kind to protect not just the athletes but officials, arena workers, media personnel and family members.

When it comes to hockey, some have been talking about prohibiting players from spitting on the bench or on the ice. Sounds sensible. Another suggestion has been the use of full face masks, which given the NHL Players’ Association historic objection to such safety equipment, might be tough to enforce. Others have suggested that scrums after whistles will have to be eliminated to avoid unnecessary contact between players. Or unnecessary teeth marks, if Alex Burrows makes a comeback.

All these seem possible and have merit. Fighting, however, should be eliminated before any of those things happen because of the obviously greater threat to players’ health than playing the game by the rules. What the penalty for fighting might be is open to debate, but given the ongoing pandemic, it would have to be severe (10 games?) to make sure players don’t cross that particular line.

It’s possible the players’ union might fight the exclusion of fighting, as it could try to do as part of its role with the competition committee. That seems unlikely, given that players and their families will need to be protected at all costs, and only a small fraction of players get involved in fisticuffs.

NHL players like to parrot the company line that fighting is necessary in hockey, and the corollary to that has always been that the union would love to get rid of the instigator rule to let players “police” themselves more effectively. Given that the player representatives on the competition committee have never campaigned to make that happen, this seems a dubious contention, at best.

If the NHL was to resume without fighting, you can almost certainly believe fighting would never return. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

There’s no reason to debate fighting one more time here. We know the differences of opinion that exist. We know it’s been dying a slow death. We also know the fearsome price that has been paid by many who held this job in hockey, how difficult a job it was, and that many honestly believed they were pursuing an honourable role in the game.

But that debate has nothing to do with how the NHL needs to respond to this virus.

The traditional line-in-the-sand for the anti-fight crowd was always to wonder what would happen if a player died in a hockey fight. Well, Don Sanderson of the Whitby Dunlops did 11 years ago, and still the gloves kept dropping. Enforcer George Parros was laid out cold as a stone by Colton Orr seven years ago in an ugly incident, and today Parros of all people is in charge of NHL player safety.

Hockey authorities could always pretend certain facts didn’t exist, but they can’t pretend the coronavirus isn’t a health threat to everyone, not just fighters. We all want the game to start up again. I’d like my bantam-aged daughter to have a season next fall.

But hockey has to happen again under the right circumstances, whether it’s with kids or at the NHL level.

Clearly, fighting just won’t fit any longer. Not in this new world.

Damien Cox is a former Star sports reporter who is a current freelance contributing columnist based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @DamoSpin