Why Do Hockey Players Fight?
Don’t read this post if you are looking for a fight.
DO read this post if you want to better understand why hockey players fight.
Brandon Prust is a left winger for the Montreal Canadiens. And he is no stranger to fighting.
He also shared some insight into the “why” (and “when”) of fighting as a guest contributor to The Players Tribune.
On getting started as a fighter:
I said something like, “Hey bud, I’m really thinking about being a fighter. How do I do that?”
He was like, “Well, you get your ass beat a couple times and then hopefully you figure it out.”
This was pretty good advice. You can’t become a tough guy by watching somebody fight or by reading a book about it. You have to actually, you know, fight. So every day after practice, Chris and I would drop the mitts at center ice and practice “sparring.” This went just how you’d expect. It started off more like a fun little tussle, but you quickly learn that it’s hard to fake a fight. We both nailed each other a couple times pretty good by accident. I don’t know if he would even feel it. Chris was a tough boy with a pretty solid head on him.
The mechanics of a hockey fight:
To non-hockey fans, this might sound a little barbaric. I understand that it sounds funny to call fighting cerebral, but you have to remember, this isn’t like a normal street fight. We’re on skates and we have big baggy jerseys that can be pulled over our heads. A ton of physics that goes into it. Chris showed me everything that went in to the fight — not just punching blindly — but the balance and leverage and grips that you need. I was like a sponge soaking it all up. I actually started holding my own.
And guess what? I still got cut. I was the final guy sent down to Junior B before the season. I was crushed, but I ended up telling my coach Dale Hunter, a former NHL enforcer, something that probably changed the course of my life. I said, “Just give me a chance. Put me in and you’ll never take me out.”
The Enforcer code:
Thankfully, the guy respected the code. There’s a mutual respect between enforcers. Guys who don’t honor the code are called rats. Rats are the guys who show zero respect for opponents. They’ll go after the top skill player and take runs at goalies and then won’t answer the bell when it comes time to fight. They’ll act tough, but when a tough guy comes knocking on the door, they skate away.
During the fight:
Once the gloves fall off, everything else kind of fades away. You can’t hear the fans. You can’t hear the ref. It’s just silence. That’s the easy part. The tough part is the day leading up to the game when you know you’re going up against a tough guy. You can’t help but think about it all day, and you go through a roller coaster of emotions. It can be almost impossible to think about the actual hockey part of the game. You definitely lose some sleep at nap time.
Image courtesy of Lisa Gansky.
