Hockey Prompt

Fighting in hockey is a bit of a sticky subject and probably will be for a long time, but there really is only a matter of time until it is out of the sport to be honest. There is very little justifiable reason for it in reality, but it is currently in the game, some of that to do with the culture, but also the way the game is managed as well. A lot of people get away with a lot of things both during the season, but especially during the playoffs, and although people always say "the game is fast", the refs usually leave a lot of calls out of the game that any player outside pro hockey would be called for immediately. Part of that is down to the product itself, fighting is as much hockey as the one timer historically, and it will probably take another generation of high-skill players to come through to further separate the modern game from fighting. As much as some current fans don't want to hear it, the nearest comparable you can think of is soccer/EU football. Technically it is a contact sport, but pretty much any contact that puts a player at any risk of falling is called a foul, while if you go back 30-40 years the game was a lot less "soft", the way the game is played now is extremely different to then. We see this change in hockey today, the game is faster, less about big hits and more about speed. The more the league goes that direction, focusing on skill, the more the league will be pushed to protect players more and more, and eventually the culture of fighting will be extremely rare. I don't know how long it will take, but eventually fights will basically only happen in playoffs, and then eventually almost never at all, and then they will be outlawed. It really will only take another 1-2 serious injuries during a fight or a decade or two more of skill development and the penalty for fighting will probably end up going up to a game misconduct, to a suspension. Maybe in a hundred years it is gone, but the idea that putting a multi-million dollar asset at risk of an injury cause someone decided to rip their helmet off and beat them up probably won't sit well as franchise valuations go up and up and up too.