Kassian fight should serve as warning to the NHL...but it won't
NHL and Oilers 'dodged a bullet on anything too serious', but how long will it be before their luck runs out and someone dies from injuries sustained in a hockey fight?
It’s going to happen. It’s only a matter of time. Might be tonight, might be next week, might not be for another 10 years. It could have happened last night. But at some point, an NHL player is going to die as the result of injuries sustained in a hockey fight.
This doesn’t even include the likes of Derek Boogaard, Wade Belak or Todd Ewen, frequent fighters who died either purposely or accidentally by their own actions and were later found to be afflicted with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). What we’re talking about is a player who will, in front of thousands of fans in an arena and potentially millions more on television, die as the result of a fight going tragically wrong.
The NHL, as it did last night in the fight between Zack Kassian of the Edmonton Oilers and Zack MacEwen of the Vancouver Canucks, continues to escape the worst-case scenario on this and continues to fail to learn its lesson. The death of Don Sanderson as the result of a hockey fight in a senior hockey league nearly 13 years ago, has done nothing to prompt the NHL to keep some of the biggest, strongest and most fit athletes on the planet from punching each other in the face with bare knuckles and toppling over one another onto a hard surface.
Kassian-MacEwen was one of those fights. Kassian is 6-foot-3 and 211 pounds, while MacEwen is 6-foot-3 and 205 pounds. Both players have a long history of fighting dating back to junior hockey. Early in the fight, Kassian’s helmet came off and after MacEwen wrestled him down, Kassian’s head directly hit the ice and he was knocked out cold. (MacEwen motioned to the Oilers bench to get their medical personnel out right away, which makes him an all-round wonderful guy and hero in hockey circles. Only hockey, indeed.) “It’s scary, it’s terrible and it’s not cool,” said Canucks defenseman Quinn Hughes. “It probably didn’t need to happen.”
Of course it didn’t need to happen. It never needs to happen. But a meaningless fight in a meaningless game had the potential to be so much more serious. The fight happened because Kassian is 30 years old and had a miserable, injury-plagued season in 2020-21. He’s trying to remain relevant, so when MacEwen bumps Edmonton goalie Mike Smith, Kassian challenges the 25-year-old to a fight to prove something to himself and his teammates, despite the fact MacEwen received a two-minute penalty for goalie interference. In some ways, it was a similar to a pre-season fight between Nick Kypreos and Ryan VandenBussche 24 years ago that left Kypreos unconscious and spewing blood and resulted in his career being over. Kypreos was knocked out by a punch, then hit his head on the ice. Kassian was fine until he went down and slammed his into the ice.
Kypreos, who acknowledged that he still likes watching fights and the storylines and build-up that often surround them, watched the fight and had the same feeling he has whenever he sees a player’s helmet come off in a fight. “When a guy loses his helmet, it brings me back to my situation where my head hit the ice,” Kypreos said. “I did watch it and I did cringe a little bit. And my first thought was, ‘God, I hope he’s OK.’ ”
On Friday, Oilers coach Dave Tippett said he hadn’t spoken with Kassian, but that the player was at the rink and there is reason to believe he might have a concussion. “We’re lucky…he banged his head pretty good,” Tippett said. “But how he sounded last night and how he’s doing today, I think we dodged a bullet on anything too serious.”
Perhaps they did. And so did the NHL. But rather than take steps to ban fighting by penalizing it with a game misconduct and/or suspensions, they’ll continue to count on it being organically removed from the game. And they might get lucky there, too, because fighting is at historic lows. Last season, there were 196 fights in 828 games, which is an average of one every 4.4 games. The pre-season, once a fighting free-for-all, has had just 37 fights in 88 games this season, which amounts to one fight every 2.83 games. In fact, there have been no fights in 60 of the 88 games, and of the 37 fights, only nine of them have been between two players who are both full-time NHL players.
Those who want to see fighting stay in the game will argue there’s so little of it happening now that it’s not a factor. But that’s not problem anymore. The days of going to a boxing match and a hockey game breaking out are gone, and have been for a long time. The danger now is not in the number of fights, but the fact that they’re occurring between players who are bigger, stronger and more dangerous than they’ve ever been before. It should come as no surprise that players are injured, sometimes seriously, in fights. When you punch a person in the face, the intent is pretty clear. Or as Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurse acknowledged: “Usually when you drop your gloves, you’re not worried about the welfare of the guy on the other side. That’s just the honest truth about when guys get into fights.”
Preach, Darnell, preach. At this point, it just seems the NHL and those who support the culture of violence in the game are basically whistling by the graveyard, crossing their fingers and hoping nothing terrible happens. That’s the strategy. Everyone knows where this is going, yet the league and those who love this stuff, many of whom are in the most powerful positions in hockey, refuse to let go. “I would say at some point it will come to the point where fighting won’t be allowed in hockey anymore,” Tippett said, “but we’re not there yet.”
We can only hope it gets there before something really terrible happens.
you’re right, sadly, just a matter of time before it happens…Head shots also need to be eliminated. Consequences or fines need to be more serious.