In my first deep dive I took an intensive and comprehensive look into the role of the Agitator, what it means, and why I love it so much. As you may recall, I briefly talked about one of the core ideals of Agitation being the avoidance of fighting, essentially doing everything in your power to start a problem and then allowing the other guy to take the fall when he rightly tries to finish it. Today I will be looking at the other side of the equation, a man who, unlike the Agitator, won’t hesitate to drop the gloves for any reason from a bad hit on their teammate, to just feeling like knocking a guy out every once in a while. To do this I will be looking at the very best fighter in junior hockey, and potentially finding the story within the numbers and answering questions such as why do they fight and is it really helping their team. Allow me to introduce you to...
Boris Petrov, a Left Defender for the Quebec City Citadelles.


This was probably pretty obvious to those who follow fighting even a little a bit.. Coming in with 15 Fights and 10 Wins, Boris Petrov is both the most prolific, and successful fighter in the SMJHL. I find a player like Boris at the top of the fighting leaderboards very interesting and somewhat surprising, While it certainly makes sense considering he comes in with 15 Fighting Skill, tied with his blazing speed as his highest rated skill, Petrov defies the narrative that hockey purists love to spout when it comes to fighting within the sport, that narrative being, Fighting is for guys with no talent, guys who can’t play hockey so they just become thugs on ice in the hopes it’ll let them cling onto a roster spot. This stance absolutely falls flat on its face when you apply it to the league's biggest and best fighter, where you’d typically expect it to be the most evident. The numbers however, tell an extremely different story, Boris Petrov can’t just break noses and bruise eyes, he is a fantastic hockey player. The ninth best defensive graded player in all of the SMJHL, to be exact. His physical presence stretches far beyond his fighting, he also ranks #1 in the league in hits, with almost 40 more than 2nd place, and near 100(!) from number 3. Boris Petrov has to be the most feared player in Junior Hockey, not the type of fancy fear that comes from the most skilled snipers and danglers, but real, old-fashioned, bodily harm, type of fear. 

Now detractors may have one big criticism of Big Boris, and it’s not an entirely invalid one, for all the good he does, and despite being a top defender on the best Eastern Division team in the league, his fighting ways have left him with the dubious honor of sitting at the top of the Penalty Minutes leaderboard. While this is always a bad look, I think it’s blatantly misleading. I don’t think it’s a huge revelation to anyone that fighting is the most time costly penalty in Hockey, with 5 minutes in the box being the minimum punishment. With this hefty time loss it’s easy to make the logical leap of fighting in general being a specifically bad penalty and a net negative, and in some cases, yeah I would agree, however fighting is a unique thing when it comes to penalization. First of all it's the one penalty that automatically offsets as it does, in fact, take two to tango. On top of that, besides a goal, there is potentially no bigger momentum shifting and team energizing action than beating the living shit out of a guy. Moving forward with the assertion that fights are at worst a net neutral and arguably the most positive of all penalties, let's do some quick math, not my strong suit but I think I can handle it. So, 15 total fights from Boris, times 5 minutes per fight, comes to 75 minutes, and when we subtract that from Boris’ 175 minute total, that leaves us with 100 minutes, which puts him in a much more reasonable range, and even behind Left Winger Kermit Murphy from Detroit, who comes in with 147 Penalty Minutes, despite only having a single fight this season.

I briefly touched on this earlier in this deep dive but as I wrap things up I want to focus on one crucial aspect of this whole thing; the Quebec City Citadelles are a really great hockey team, and on an amazing team with so many amazing offensive players like Mew Two, Zdenko Beranek, and Mikael Koskinen, it may seem a bit odd to focus on a guy whose stat line features just One Goal and a -4 +/-, however I am of the firm belief that Boris Petrov is the heart & soul of this Citadelles squad, and come playoff time, the biggest challenge in playing Quebec won't be stopping Mew, or scoring on Mat Smith, but stopping Boris Petrov from breaking your favorite players bones, and swallowing the fear that has to come with knowing that the man standing across the ice from you is willing to bleed for his team, and forces you to decide; are you?

Approved +5 TPE @Alyxander