Flyers Goon Bites … Another Player

There are hockey fans who love the fighting, maintaining that it’s a just harmless side-show in the sport, no players are really at risk because designated fighters go after other designated fighters. (While we’re here, how would you like to be that guy? “Yeah, you. You lack speed, grace, quick, soft hands or any other discernible hockey skills so, um, how about you go out there and just start beating on the other team? Okay, then. Which line starts?” That’d be depressing. Not as depressing as working as a professional organizer hired to work with one of A & E’s Hoarders, but still.)

There is some truth to that notion and I remember seeing Georges Laraque give an opposing player a nudge, then saying, “So, you wanna go?” You could read his lips. It was pretty funny because it was so polite that he just asked the guy, who kind of shrugged his consent, so they squared off and punched and jabbed until they both ended up on the ice and then in their respective penalty box. Nobody was at any serious risk of injury. That’s not what the fight was about. And probably 90% of hockey fights fall into this category –unnecessary but also essentially harmless.

There are hockey fans who assert that the fights do nothing but drag down the sport, that the fighting, while perhaps an essential element of the game back in the dark ages, is unnecessary now and holds the sport back from attracting new fans. And there’s some truth to that, too.

Personally, the fights don’t keep me away, but if they were eliminated altogether, it would certainly not diminish the hockey experiece for me. I’m not much of a fan of the fights and I think teams that regularly rely on them are just not as skilled or interesting to me as other teams. I’d much rather watch the Penguins, the Red Wings, the Capitals, the Hurricanes and the Blackhawks, than teams which rely on fighting, bullying and clutching-grabbing tactics.

That said, on Thursday night, the Philadelphia Flyers, historically known for their brooding, boorish style of play reached new lows. In the final moments in Philaelphia, with a Penguins victory nearly in the bag, Mike Richards tossed an unnecessary shoulder shiver into goalie Marc-Andre Fleury in net, while behind that, the ginger-kid with a mullet, orange-clad ape Scott Hartnell engaged Kris Letang. After Letang took him to the ice, Hartnell pulled a Tyson. Only he bit Letang’s finger, not his ear.

The video is crappy, below, but still you can get a sense of the idiocy:

So just how much are the reigning Stanley Cup champs inside the Flyers heads at his point, because biting a dude? How great is that? What an epic level of frustration. Thank god it’s hockey season again.