Hockey prompt:

From a spectator perspective, I think fights do a lot to get the crowd excited, it puts butts in seats and generates revenue for the team. Even in a stadium without fans, I think fighting is an important part of the game of hockey. I don't really see the need to fight for the sake of fighting, but I do think it's one of the few ways that a team can (try to) protect their high performance players.

Fights should be happening as often as they need to, not because the fans demand them or the guys feel like racking up PIMs. If your teammate takes a bad hit, you take up for them. If there's no one on your team willing to drop the gloves and make sure that someone pays the price for it, your opponents will run roughshod over the whole team. Sometimes I feel like the new era is too resistant to squaring up and settling things with fists, but it's integral to the game on some level.

It's really not even as bad as the media makes it out to be -- these dudes aren't fighting someone who doesn't want to fight. They're typically honorable about it, and then they get back on the ice and play (hopefully with sportsmanship), and there's a lesson there, probably.