Less hockey fights - a threatening future for the NHL's dirtiest teams (2024)

A sensational advancement in ice hockey in recent years is that the fighting graph is declining in NHL because people have disliked violence in a hockey game.

This is the 21st century and audience even die-hard fans want to see an amazing, entertaining faster game rather than a fight on the ice in leagues. But the old fans still want players to put off gloves and make hockey game full of suspense by initiating fights. ‘Fights has a major role in NHL’ argued by Bettman in an interview.

The NHL itself is in confusion about that issue. They want to entertain fans but with fewer injuries and traumas to players. However, the trend is changing automatically and fewer fights are observed in recent years. It is not bad to say that NHL wants a complete disappearance of fights over time with no action being taken up by NHL itself.

It might be expected that the future will favor clean teams and might make a contrast for dirty teams. The reason is that the fighting graph is declining day by day. A tremendous decrease has been seen in fighting on ice in the last ten years. The fighting figure that was 0.52 per contest in the 2010/11 season has now reduced to 0.18 in the 2018/19 season. Young players like Connor McDavid and Petrik Laine have become conscious about safety and only 250 players are seen dropping gloves to initiate a fight last year.

NHL is focusing to ensure the safety of players and cut off brutality and aggressiveness from the league. The modern era is emerging with change and more kids are tempted toward hockey. But the die-hard fans are not in favor to eliminate fights from the league. ‘It is more entertaining to see a hockey game with major professional fights’, said the audience. However, the NHL is focusing to remove staged fights because the only normal flow is needed in-game.

Here comes the main point that if fights get out of NHL completely, it will put the carrier of dirtiest teams into darkness. Batman spoke out in favor of fights and to secure the future of dirties teams by saying: ‘Eliminating fighting would mean eliminating the jobs of the “fighters,” meaning these guys would not have NHL careers’

For the sake of the future of dirtiest teams, there is still needed to have staged fights within limits in the hockey league. Otherwise, the dirtiest teams must play without fights with a complete change in playing style. The dirty players need to modify their behavior and play with less aggressiveness otherwise new fans will kick out them by disliking violence and ignition of staged fights.

The above statics concluded that fighting is on decrease day by day, but nothing could be suggested by NHL to stop or continue the pattern. But it is a must to say that dirty teams may face a decline in a career in the coming years.

The NHL is looking to a point of no return and decided to put efforts together that may change hockey league trends in coming years that will be liked by supports and opponents of hockey fights.