Let’s Have Every NHL Game Start With A Fight | Sports Takes & News | TooAthletic.com

The New York Rangers and Washington Capitals set back the National Hockey League decades this week when a brawl took the place of a puck drop to start their game Wednesday night. The fisticuffs that began the game was the result of a previous cheap shot thrown by Washington’s Tom Wilson, setting the stage for a brutal night for the NHL. All I would say to the National Hockey League is that if you are going to allow this kind of thing to happen once with little more than fines, let’s have every hockey game start like this one did since you are the one sport that seems able to get away with it. 

Tom Wilson slams Artemi Panarin to the ground twice

— Ali Matthews (@AliMatthews34)

Almost every sports franchise has a rival that being a fan of one team means a dislike for the other. You would not, however, ever see the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens line up for the first play of an AFC North showdown and instead of snapping the ball, drop their helmets and start throwing haymakers. Nor would the national anthem at a Dodgers/Giants game be followed by a few players from each team wrestling and fighting on the pitcher’s mound. Even in soccer, rivals from any league would not take the pitch and begin a match by throwing punches in the midfield as fans of both football clubs followed suit in the stands.

For whatever reason, the National Hockey League has always been permitted to allow fighting to be part of their sport, with players like Tom Wilson labeled “enforcers” and no one in the game batting an eyelash. Yet, if an NBA fight breaks out, players are called thugs by commentators. And if Latino soccer or baseball players show their emotion, racial slurs fly from the stands and broadcast booths on both sides of the Atlantic.

Somehow, perhaps because of their history, the mostly white National Hockey League is permitted to let their players fight at the start or in the middle of a game, with the league fining the New York Rangers just $250,000 for their actions. For the record, punching a man in the back of the head while he is face down on the ice only cost from the NHL, further proving that fighting is welcomed in the league.

So, my message to the National Hockey League is simple: If this is who you are and what you want to be as a league and a sport, then have the guts to embrace it all the way. 

You do this by starting every game the way the Rangers/Capitals game did on Wednesday night since that is what you think your fans want most. While you are at it, have some NASCAR drivers entertain the fans with some fights during intermission, because we wouldn’t want to have fans be bored between periods.

In short, you have already sold yourself to the lowest common denominators by allowing these fights across the NHL, so go ahead and live with what you have created: A fringe sport that few people care about during the regular season and have a hard time bringing fans to the television during the playoffs until, wait for it, players start fighting! 

Your game is a joke, so why not just turn in into the WWE by staging your pre-game fights like wrestling does, because at least that way you won’t try to pretend to be a sport anymore and focus on being what you truly are, the lowest form of entertainment other than reality television available in America today. 

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