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“I went to a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out,” the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield once joked.
In the 2016-2017 National Hockey League (NHL) season, there were 372 fights out of 1,230 games – an average of 0.3 fights per game. Fighting in hockey has been banned nearly everywhere outside of the NHL, including youth games, college play, and the Winter Olympics.
Fighting has been part of NHL hockey since the league’s formation in 1917 and its 1922 rule about what was then called “fisticuffs” (that’s an old-fashioned word for fighting). The current NHL rulebook addresses fighting in Rule 46, which defines a fight as at least one player punching or taking a swing at another player repeatedly, or players wrestling in a way that is difficult to break up. Players who fight are sent to the penalty box during the game, and may be subject to additional fines or suspensions.
In the early 1960s, there was a fight in about 20% of NHL games. That percentage increased to 100% by the 1980s, when there was an average of one fight every game. In 1992, the NHL introduced an instigator rule adding an extra two minutes in the penalty box for anyone caught starting a fight.
Fighting has since decreased: a fight broke out in 29-40% of NHL games from the 2000/2001 season to the 2013/2014 season. Games with fights have steadily decreased since, from 27% of games in the 2014/2015 season to 17% in the 2018/2019 season.
Pro
- Allowing fighting makes the sport safer overall by holding players accountable.
- Fighting draws fans and increases the game's entertainment value.
- Fighting is a hockey tradition that exists in the official rules and as an unwritten code among players.
Con
- Fighting in hockey leads to concussions, mental health problems, and death.
- Fighting at the professional level sets a bad example for kids.
- Fighting in hockey glorifies violence.
This article was published on March 9, 2021, at Britannica’s ProCon.org, a nonpartisan issue-information source.