Quote:
Originally Posted by RomaGoth
I am pretty much on the fence in regards to fighting in the NHL. In the past, when I was much younger (back when the NJ Devils were relevant, Zach Parise was just a twinkle in his mama's eye, and college football didn't need a system to determine which teams were good), I believed that fighting was a great part of the game. I am not so sure about that anymore. I totally get your argument about why other sports don't allow it, and the more I thought about this the more I became confused as to why the NHL has fighting and no other leagues allow it (outside of rugby and European soccer).
Claude Lemieux was a complete piece of shit who played to injure other players, and finally was called out on it when McCarty rearranged his face. With that being said, a season-long ban for his actions probably would have resulted in the same thing: no more Lemieux.
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You could also argue that the actual act of having his face rearranged may not have changed him anymore than all the other after-effects of that cheapshot. I'll use a really lame and overly long personal example to try to explain:
Years ago I played in a very competitive floor hockey league. My team was terrible, and most teams stomped all over us every game. However one other team was just as bad (if not a little worse) than us, and that team became our heated rival. Because the league was pretty small, we played each other a few times throughout the season, and the games got progressively more chippy.
In one of the last games I remember playing, my main nemesis on the other team high-sticked me in the face not once, but twice in the same shift. I complained to the ref after the second one, because he was standing right there and called nothing yet again, and he just shrugged. So I turned around, boiling with anger, and followed my nemesis into the corner at full speed. He had his back to me, and with him about 3 feet from the boards I caught him and put everything I had into a vicious push from behind.
The guy went face-first into the boards, and even as he was flying towards them I knew I had done something super, super bad. Thankfully for everyone involved he wasn't seriously hurt, and he got up looking for a fight. Naturally I was still pretty hot and we got into it a bit before getting separated. But even then, my actions were pretty half-assed; I felt absolutely awful for what I'd done, and was thanking God I hadn't just put the guy in a hospital bed over a game of floor hockey.
From that day on, I have never in my life hit someone from behind in any type of hockey. I think about it whenever I get too upset, or am tempted to get extra 'edgy' as I play. It totally changed how I react in the game, and it had nothing to do with the mini-scrum that followed, or even if no one had separated us and the guy had beaten my into the floor. I simply realised how bad it could have gone and knew I never wanted to have that feeling again.
So back to Lemieux. I think a case could be made that the entire Draper incident simply caused him to 'see the light', or otherwise wake up to the potential consequences of his actions. Maybe he realised he went too far, and altered his game in the future because of it. We can't really know unless he were to say one way or the other, but i think that scenario is just as plausible as him becoming less chippy simply because he didn't want to get his face rearranged again.