But fighting and the goon/enforcer role is dying in the NHL. One of the greatest enforcers still playing is Ryan Reaves, currently with the Vegas Golden Knights. Earlier in his career, he trained to be a brawler. But he was smart enough to see the NHL is moving towards speed over brawn.
So Reaves adjusted: he began working on his scoring skills, in particular, the tip in. All that practice paid off when he tipped in the puck to win the Western Conference for Vegas last Sunday.
That little anecdote serves the bigger picture that the NHL is changing for the better, and at the expense of all the Barack Ghettobama leagues such as the nfl and nba.
Oh, I forgot to mention this: Ryan Reaves is black.
I have never seen players in the NHL disrespect the anthem, and most of them aren’t even American (Canadians, Russians, Czechs, Swedes and Finns mostly).
Not a fan as such, but I notice that fights on the ice break out somewhere other than where the puck is. The cameras always have to pull away from the scoring action to where the fight broke out. And there are rules; drop gloves, do not use the stick as a weapon, head shots only, and the linesmen break it up when one knee goes down on the ice.
But nobody finished a fight like Arron Asham.
And not all fights are the same; some end with both players exhausted; some are real grudge matches with intent to hurt, and some I swear the fighters are talking to each other, not cursing but more like, “Where ya going after the game?” “I dunno, just get a beer I guess”.
But you’ve heard the old joke, “Last night I went to the fights, but instead a hockey game broke out”.
;^)