How to take fighting out of hockey.

This must be really difficult to understand since the New York Times just ran a three part series lamenting the impossibility of getting NHL players to stop punching each other in the face. The Times cites all kinds of statistics on the growth of fighting in hockey, and the effects of different NHL rules on the level of fighting in the game. They cite new books re-publicizing old research on the dangers of multiple concussions in short time periods to long-term mental stability. There's a lot of studying, generalizing and hand-wringing. It seems like nothing can be done to stop hockey players from punching faces, and it all sounds very scary.

Don't worry, though, America. I will now explain in just one sentence how to stop hockey players from punching you in the face:

Cover your face with a steel cage so anyone who tries to punch your face breaks his hand.


After a few people break their hands open, no one is going to be punching faces anymore.

I grew up as a huge fan of Capitals players like Dale Hunter, Al Iafrate, John Kordic, Nick Kypreos, Alan May and Stephen Peat. These were not gentle, easy-going hockey players. They played as hard as they could, pushing the limits of the game in those days, and they paid any price to dominate their rivals. In all the commotion about Derrick Bougard's tragic death from head injuries sustained as an NHL fighter, no one has brought up the way that a career as an NHL fighter contributed to Kordic's death nearly twenty years ago, leading him down a spiral of head injuries and drug abuse until he died in a shootout with Toronto police, still in his prime. Hunter, of course, was the first hockey player suspended for 21 games, and the first to log a combination of 3,000 penalty minutes and 1,000 points. May, Kypreos and Peake fought more than him some years.

These were my childhood heroes. I got into hockey thinking fighting was awesome. I have played hockey as a child and as an adult, and I have led a league in penalty minutes, mostly logged in the spirit of sticking up for my teammates (with, yes, an occasional blatant trip to maintain a lead). I have never, however, punched a guy in the face during a hockey game, because I understand about relative density, and I can easily tell that the bones and connective tissues in my hands are not as strong as the steel cages on my opponents faces. None of my opponents punched my face, either, because I certainly never left the locker room without my own shiny grate securely triple-snapped in place.

I won't say that hockey became a safe game with just one additional pound of equipment. I still got knocked out once, but that knockout came from hi-fiving a teammate after a win. He lost his balance and fell into me. I lost my balance and fell on my head on the ice. I think his head landed on my shoulder, driving me downward. I skipped the next practice, on my doctor's advice. A week later, I played a game and continued healing properly because nobody even dreamed of trying to punch me in my steel-barred, medieval armored, fist-grating face. If they had, of course, I would have been a good sport and helped them pick up any loose fingers.