The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Is Fighting on the Rise in the NHL?

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

For years, fighting was on the decline in the National Hockey League and traditional enforcers lost their place on the roster. But is fighting coming back? It certainly was in that Four Nations Canada/USA game in Montreal, where there were three fights in nine seconds. Is that moment a turning point for fighting in the game? We've also seen our share of brutal headshots in the Stanley Cup Playoffs so far. Is the league succeeding at all in cutting down on those? Guests include: Ryan Pinder, co-host of Barn Burner Podcast at Flames Nation; Sean McIndoe, Senior NHL writer at The Athletic and co-host of two podcasts: Puck Soup and The Athletic Hockey Show; Mary Ormsby, Toronto Star journalist for 35 years; and Ken Campbell, Freelance hockey writer and a long-time writer at The Hockey News.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello everybody in the Hammer and Beyond. We are coming your way. May 10th at the Music Hall in downtown Hamilton. We're recording a new episode of TVO Today Live and we'd love to see you there. We're talking to the amazing and multi-award winning Canadian musicians, Sarah Harmer, Cadence Weppen, and Tom Wilson,

about the power of music and musicians in our culture, and especially during tumultuous political times. Tickets are free, thanks to the Wilson Foundation. Go to tvo.org slash tvotodaylive or search it directly on Eventbrite. So join us May 10th, 7 p.m. in Hamilton. For years, fighting was on the decline in the National Hockey League and traditional enforcers lost their place on the roster. But is fighting coming back?

It certainly was in that four nations, Canada, USA game in Montreal, where there were three pierced six brawls barely a minute into the game. We've also seen our share of brutal headshots in the Stanley Cup playoffs so far. Is the league succeeding at all in cutting down on those? Let's get into that with in Calgary, Alberta, Ryan Pinder.

He is co-host of Barnburner podcast at Flames Nation. In the nation's capital, Sean McIndoe, senior NHL writer at the athletic and co-host of two podcasts, Puck Soup. That's very cute. Puck Soup and that's very cute. Puck Soup and the Athletic Hockey Show. And with us here in studio, Mary Ormsby, freelance journalist and former Toronto Star journalist

for 35 years, and Ken Campbell, freelance hockey writer and a long time writer at the Hockey News. And it's great to see you two here in our studio again. Mary, you and I go, oh my gosh, do we go way back? We go way, way back, yes. We go back to the days of studio too. It's great to see you again. Ryan and Sean, thanks there for being with us in points beyond. Let's just, I mean, what did Warner Wolf used to say, let's throw to the videotape.

This is how the Four Nations game that I just referenced in the intro started and well, let's watch and then discuss. Sheldon, if you would. So the contracts, both get involved early. And Sam Bennett's not gonna back down even though he's outweighed. Binninton gets attention. He might have more. Perreco and Miller. And Miller dropped the gloves and Perreco's gonna answer. And Perreco's gonna answer in a big way. Three fights, nine seconds.

The both teams may need some reserves tonight. Three fights, nine seconds. Okay, Sean, start us off. How would you characterize what we just saw? It was pretty loud in Montreal that night. I'll tell you that much. I know that a lot of us maybe want to shake our heads at hockey fights. And if you're not a hockey fan, you might not even really understand what that is, how it's allowed.

But boy, you go back that night, Montreal was rocking and it was a big, loud, excited crowd. And the fights were part of that. Ryan, how would you characterize what we saw? Well, there's a lot of buildup towards that event. How much of the players care about this event? Did it mean anything to them? Was it just some manufactured event from the league and the PA?

And I think nine seconds in, those questions were answered. You'd gone essentially a decade plus without best on best for Canada against USA. And when the players got that emotionally invested where where they chose to shed mitts to, I guess, start setting the tone about how much each country wanted to win. I thought it was the most exciting start to a hockey game I could recall in my life. I'm sure there's been some equivalents, but it didn't feel forced so much as organic as weird as that sounds with three fights in nine seconds. And I don't know that you'd find a sporting atmosphere as turbochargers that won that

night. And of course you also just had the very new tariff stuff and the boon of the anthem going on. It was politically charged. It was a perfect storm for an incredibly invested two teams on nice that night. Mary, what did you see? I was astonished to see that, actually, because it was reminiscent of hockey in the 70s and 80s.

And I thought, wow, is the whole game going to be like this? And to some degree, I was thinking that it was staged, because this was a round robin game. All those elements that have already been mentioned were there, the political climate and the booing of the anthems and Canada's the 51st state, all of that. But it just had, it just smacked to me that it was a stage sort of, let's see what we can do here in the round robin in a game that didn't really matter obviously till, you know,

at that point. So I'm hearing a hint of disagreement with Ryan who said it was organic as opposed to staged. But I mean, there was WhatsApp threads going on before the game where the Kachuk brothers said, we're gonna start something. Send them the message, yeah. Ken, what'd you see?

Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. I think it was anything but organic. I don't think it was spontaneous at all. It was completely staged and we know that because the USA players were sending texts to one another saying, let's do this off the hop here. There was absolutely nothing organic about it.

There was nothing emotional. What could have possibly happened in those zero seconds before the puck was dropped that would have had these guys emotional? No, I thought it was garbage. I thought it was garbage. I thought it was a terrible look for the game. And then, you know, as is often the case, you know, they had the Dancing Bear show at the beginning of the game,

and then people got down to actually playing the game and playing hockey, which happens often. Ryan, you want to come back at that? I mean, look, the Americans could talk about it ahead of time. That doesn't mean that, you know, the Canadians said, okay, guys, here we go. And I remember there's these three nights and nine seconds I mean Ken you're kind of suggesting the Canadians are expecting that is that fair you that's that's

something that you can factually back up no it has nothing to do with the Canadians expecting it had nothing I mean if you're gonna if you're getting attacked on the ice you're gonna respond and but there was nothing organic about it there was nothing spawned there was no spontaneity to it whatsoever. I mean, the Americans plotted to do this. The American players plotted to do this. They talked about it in a group text. They discussed it.

They planned it. There was absolutely nothing organic about it at all. So the question then because- Well, it was the Canadians. So, I mean, the Canadians didn't know it was coming and they chose to respond whichever way they wanted, which was to decline fights or to accept them. So-

Oh yeah, yeah, that happens all the time. That happens all the time in the NHL when a guy drops his gloves, you just skate away and decline. Yeah, that happens all the time, Ryan. We can look at the fight cards for Brandon Hagel and Colton Pereyco and others. They're not regular scrappers.

These were decisions that were unorthodox to be sure. So I wasn't expecting Colton Parejo to fight. He's huge, but I believe he's fought less than five times in his career. Yeah, he's actually not a fighter, even though he's a very big guy. I guess the question is though, Sean, was it good for the game?

Well, I mean, that is the million dollar question, right? That clip that you just showed, those three fights in nine seconds were probably seen by more sports fans in North America than anything that the NHL has put out in years and years, including Stanley Cup finals, including all-star games, whatever else you want to see that moment on that Saturday night, Montreal became a cultural phenomenon in a way that we have not seen in hockey.

Now is all press good press? Is all publicity good publicity? Or did that send maybe a wrong message to some hockey fans or not even hockey fans, sports fans out there, or even people who aren't sports fans saying, oh, this is, this is hockey, right? This is the caricature of what I think of hockey. It's guys with no teeth punching each other. Um, I, I see that argument. That said, look, that was actual passion there.

There was. And look, it was absolutely linked in to the things that were happening politically. You can't separate the two and the booing of the anthems and what have you. It absolutely got people's attention. And it turned the future game, the championship game a few days later, into a must-see event in a way that I don't know that anything else could have. And that game didn't have the fights. It didn't have the dancing bears, as Ken would say. It was pure hockey, and it was great hockey, and a whole bunch of people saw it that otherwise never would have.

And thankfully, the right team won. Yeah. Absolutely. Can I, Mary, let me try this with you. We heard Brian say it a moment ago, which was that was the greatest start to any hockey game he'd ever seen in his life. Kevin B. Exa, who's seen a few hockey games on the broadcast

that night, said it was the greatest beginning of any hockey game he'd ever seen in his life. How about for you? I have to say I don't like the fighting. I've seen my own kids get in fights when they played hockey, and I felt physically ill about it, especially when the helmets came off. So I'm seeing it from the perspective of a parent and a journalist, too. I just feel that the proof is that if the fighting happened in that round robin game, it was

unnecessary for the championship finals, so it wasn't necessary. And for a league that's purportedly trying to cut down on violence, protect player health, protect player brains, to somehow still glorify that as the greatest thing that's happened to NHL hockey in a long time. It really strikes me as hypocritical and wrong and I will just say very quickly I was surprised that the montage leading into the game won the Leafs in Florida on Monday night, and I don't know if the broadcaster was involved in this or the NHL approved it, but that montage full of clips about about a minute long. There

were two fights in that montage and during the game too there was a commercial for the Stanley Cup playoffs, you're still selling the Stanley Cup on fighting. There were fights or at least some blood loss in one of those commercials too. So I just find it's just so hypocritical to say we want to protect our players but you know let's fight when we can boys. It's a really good thing. Ryan, what about that? Too much hypocrisy? I think part of being a hockey fan is understanding that you are going to be a bit of a hypocrite

if you enjoy a fight. You can't ignore the science on head trauma and CTE, but the NHL has made that link. They won't publicly, and I'm sure there's good legal reason for them to do that, or at least good business reason to do that. You know you probably owe a lot of people a lot of money if you acknowledge that and continue to play the game the way you do but it's contact sport and this game without contact is not as interesting and this is the entertainment business and you can slow people down and you can take out the hitting and you can say no fighting your product's not as interesting it's not going gonna sell as much.

It's just a fact. Mary might not have liked the start of that hockey game, but the vast majority of people holding TV remotes were not picking them up after that. And that's the business that this league and the PA are in. And they were the co-presenters of the tournament. The tournament went from, is this a laughing stock? I might not care, to immediately,

people in places where hockey's not on TV saying, can we get that game on? And I don't really buy the notion that because it didn't happen in the championship game, the fights didn't matter. The fights have the tone for how invested the teams were. The fights weren't here's how we win the championship. We understand you don't win a fight. You get a trophy in this sport, but it was the first time the two teams had

sent their best to play each other since Sochi in 2014. So it was a level of like, hey, remember we don't like you and remember the lengths we'll go to beat you. So, you know, all those things combined, I just think you can't ignore what those fights did for the tournament, whether it's the bottom line, the ratings, the broadcasters, or just the common fans' interest, not even the sports fans. This transcends the box fans. Ken, you can't help but... When you were watching that game in real time, you could not help but be just astonished at how the game started. And kind of, you know, I'm sure there were a lot of people who were kind of turned on by the electricity in the building and how exciting it was.

On the other hand, I wonder if there was a part of you that thought these guys are no doubt killing themselves. They are prematurely ending their lives by pounding each other right now, mostly for our amusement. Did that cross your mind? It always does. It always does. And I believe that the NHL has dodged many, many bullets

on this and that they are one very, very unfortunate incident away from a tragedy occurring. I honestly believe that's going to happen. When you say a tragedy, do you mean a death? I mean a death. I mean a death, yes. I mean, it's already happened in senior hockey. Excuse me.

It's already happened in senior hockey. And I think the NHL is one errant punch, one very, very bad incident away from a real problem here. But you know what? But I want to sort of touch on a couple of things that have been said. You know, Ryan talked about the physicality in the game and fighting in the game.

Those are not mutually exclusive. You can have physicality in a game. You can have hitting. You can have big open ice exclusive. You can have physicality in a game. You can have hitting. You can have big open ice hits. You can have a lot of physicality. You can have a lot of front net battles. You can have those sorts of things. You don't need to have fighting with it.

They're not mutually exclusive. And the second thing I want to address is with these people who like fighting. And I actually respect Ryan's view on this, and I respect Sean's view on it. I just wish more people in hockey would just say, I like it. I like fighting. I like it.

I enjoy it. It's great. But don't give me this garbage that it needs to be in the game, that it has to be in the game because it's a passionate game, because emotions are high. You know, there's a lot of sports where emotions are high and they don't have fighting. If you like it and you want it in the game,

I totally respect that. I 100% respect that. I like fighting. Just say it. Let's bring some, I mean, at the risk of doing something heretical here, let's bring some facts to the discussion, shall we here? We've got a graph here.

Sheldon, you want to bring this up? We've tracked here the season. For those listening on podcast, I'll just describe this graph. We've got seasons going back to 2005, 06, and then fights per game. And it was less than a half a fight per game, I guess one fight every other game, essentially. And then as the years ticked on, by 2008, 09, we're up to more than a fight every other game. And then for whatever reason, it starts to go down and down. And then we get to the COVID year

where it's like 0.15 fights per game, almost nothing. But then it ticks up and up and up. Now we're not where we were back in 2008, 2009, but we're higher than we were even just five years ago. So I guess, Sean, my question for you is, you know, most of us here are old enough to remember the big bad Bruins of the 70s or the, you know, the Broad Street Bullies of the 1970s. Do you miss that era of hockey? That is the tough question, because look, do I miss it? Today we know too much. I can't go back and watch those 70s errors or I came online as a hockey fan in the 1980s, the old Norris division,

every Saturday night on Hockey Night in Canada, the Leafs would be playing the Red Wings. And if the game was five to one with 10 minutes left, it wasn't like today where you just turned it off and said, well, the game's over. That was when you sat a little closer to your TV and said, okay, what's Bob Probert going to do now? What's, you know, Wendell Clark going to do? We know too much now. You go back and watch that and you're seeing guys, maybe moments that you cheered for, that you remember, and you go, but we now know that guy had a lot of trouble later in life. That guy had a lot of health issues. That guy had a lawsuit against the league. I cannot go back and enjoy that.

Now, if you could put the men in black little neuralyzer in front of my face and take away what I know and take me back to those days where we didn't know it. Maybe we should have, but where we didn't know it, we didn't think about it. Yeah, I did enjoy it. And I did find it a more entertaining product and you know I'll do what Ken's asking and I'll just say look as a guy growing up as a hockey fan I liked it better when we had that element of the game not because I thought it made it safer the you know the safety valve or whatever else because I I thought it made the entertainment product more entertaining.

I wish I didn't. I wish I could say that I was on the right side of it. And I'd like to think that I am now. But back then, yeah, it was a lot more fun to be a hockey fan because of this stuff. So Brother Campbell is gonna give you props for at least fessing up that you like the fight. Mary, I wonder, we saw the goons, as they called them,

the guys who sort of, that was their job to fight. They virtually took that out of the game, you know, for quite a patch when they changed the rules and, you know, more speed in the game was allowed and no more hooking allowed and that kind of things. But the fighting is creeping up now. It's sort of coming back. Not like it was, but it's coming back.

Does that concern you? I would say it's more a mathematical blip. Really just a cluster of things happening right now because I think overall the attention of the league and safety concerns and all that will, and salary cap issues, who are you going to hold onto? Are you a guy who can fight and hurt somebody? There's all those decisions to be made. So I think it's just a blip. What do you say, Ken? You know, there's all those decisions to be made. So I think it's just a blip.

What do you say, Ken? Well, it's interesting because, I mean, fighting now, I mean, to compare it to the 70s or the 80s, or even prior to that. It's no comparison. Yeah, I mean, it's minuscule now. There's almost no fighting in the NHL compared to that. And I mean, in those years, you know,

with the WHA and the NHL and prior to that, there was, there were truly like awful, grisly things happening on the ice that we never, ever saw because there was, because you couldn't put it up on YouTube five minutes after it happened. So I mean, comparatively, fighting is, is way down and, and almost eliminated. And it's been almost organically eliminated because of the fact that, I mean, fourth line players now are hugely talented players. They can skate, they can score, they can fight as well,

but they bring much more of a dimension to the game and you can afford to play those guys seven, eight, 10 minutes a game. Whereas if you've got the one dimensional enforcer, you can no longer have that guy on the bench playing four, five, six minutes a game. He can't keep up. He can't keep up.

And you need that roster spot for someone who can actually play. Ryan, I guess I should point out the obvious here. In the International Ice Hockey Federation, fighting is banned. In the Olympics, fighting is banned. In the European leagues, fighting is banned. In the Olympics, fighting is banned. In the European leagues, fighting is banned. Fighting obviously is still allowed in the NHL. Do you think it's inevitable that the NHL will someday mirror what the other leagues in this

world are doing? Not necessarily. And there's a few leagues in Europe you can fight. It's a huge draw in the UK in the EIHL and it sort of was a safe landing spot for a lot of guys that fought for many years in the NHL and could go get some education paid for them. Fans adored it as you see everywhere, generally speaking. I don't think they need to in the sense that to Ken's point, like we're talking about it's at the third a third of levels from 08 or wherever the graph sort of peaked there and that's way down from the 70s and 80s like the game has naturally moved well away from it to the point where if my math is correct you're talking about one that once every five games there's a

fight that teams will go and and collectively have less fights than single players used to have by a significant margin. The game's just simply moving that way. I mean, you could certainly chalk up the low point in the COVID bubble to no fans in the building, less energy, players being a little more cautious about close contact. I don't know. But generally speaking, for the last five years, it's a third of the levels of just a decade and a half ago. So that's not a level that I find alarming. And look, the important distinction here between two decades ago, three decades ago, and now is that players are walking in blind.

Like you don't have players that are saying, oh geez, blows to the head is bad for my brain. I better rethink this. You have players that are incredibly well-educated, that have had agents in their lives since their early teens, and that understand the risks involved with certain activities. And you also have players that are saying, I'm willing to take on those risks for the potential gains. So you look at someone like Rempey, who plays for New York and stands at six foot nine, and you know

fighting is his greatest tool in the league, and maybe he's's an AHL or maybe he's an AHL without it but he gets an added zero to the end of his salary when he's in the NHL if he really wants to you know fight or at least offer the threat of a fight. He's not going in and saying geez I'm now 60 I wish I'd known about this CTE stuff. He knows and it's a choice that he's ready to make just as a combat combat fighter, whether that's MMA or boxing or whatever at this phase in 2025 would say, Yeah, I understand there's

injury risks involved here, but I'm willing to trade those for the financial gain. And I'm not really here to tell other people how they should make those decisions. No, I get you. All right. Well well let's look at the other side of this. Telling other people say you can't or can't do this so long story short I think fighting is at such a level the league doesn't have to ban it it's it's pretty much almost there. Well let me put the other argument on the table Mary I'll go to you first then we'll get everybody on this you know we do remember back in the

1980s when Wayne Gretzky was absolutely lighting it up that you didn't mess with Wayne Gretzky because if you did, you had to deal with Dave Semenko who was on his left wing and taking care of him. So there was this notion that the game polices itself and, you know, if Semenko had to have the odd fight in order to make sure that his superstar was well cared for, that's the way it went. Did the threat of being beaten up by an enforcer in some respects make the game safer? I think that's the tired old trope of policing the game. And that is just a way to keep saying, I like fighting.

It's not, you know, it was the way it was because that's the way it was, I guess, back then. But when you go back to, I mean to Ryan's point you're talking about you are consenting to a certain amount of violence when you agree to play in the NHL. You know what the rules are, everyone knows what the rules are, you know, but at some point it's almost like a criminal code violation. With some things like I agree to some violence, I know what the rules are, but I don't agree to be maybe getting beaten to a pulp and maybe have a life-altering injury, which you know knock on wood hasn't happened

Although we do remember in the 1970s there were criminal charges laid at Maple Leaf Gardens. Yes, very few I mean there should be no refuge from the criminal code of Canada not even in hockey arenas, but it seems to happen Sean what do you say about this policing of the game argument? Yeah, I'm with Mary on this one. I don't buy it. I think it was a convenient way for those of us who enjoyed this stuff in the eighties and nineties. Even back then when we didn't necessarily know what CTE was, there was always that voice in the back of your head going, is this, is this really safe? Is this okay?

I mean, that guy's getting punched in the face. You know, we always used to say, there was a saying, you heard it from Don Cherry and everyone else. Nobody gets hurt in a hockey fight. And the idea was nobody gets hurt in the sense of, there's no permanent injuries. It's not like getting hit from behind or cross checked in the face. You know, maybe you get your bell rung. Well, we know now what getting your bell rung actually meant.

But even back then, we kind of understood that this doesn't seem, I don't want to get punched in the face. How come it's okay for this guy to do it? And we looked at it and we said, well, I don't want to get punched in the face. How come it's okay for this guy to do it? And, you know, we looked at it and we said, well, it's making the game safer. The proof is in the pudding, right? You look at the last 10, 15 years as we've seen the enforcers leave the game. Brian Burke famously, when he had to send Colt Noor, his enforcer down to the miners said, I'm worried the rats are going to take over the game.

And a lot of us kind of nodded along and said yeah that might happen 15 years later does anybody see a game infested by rats? Do we see cheap shots constantly? Yeah, we see him sometimes absolutely But do we see them more than we saw them in the 70s and 80s in the 90s? Let me honest with you a lot of those cheap shots in the 80s and 90s The real dirty stuff that was causing injuries it was coming from the same enforcers who theoretically were there to prevent it. I don't see out of control now the way that it was predicted 20 years ago would happen if we didn't have an enforcer on every team.

We just so happen to have some video of what Mr. McIndoe is referring to. Here we go. We know that headshots have become an increasingly big problem in the National Hockey League in particular. There are rules right now that prohibit checks where the head is the primary point of contact and such contact was avoidable. Here is a bit of a litany of what they're trying to get out of the game.

Sheldon, roll it if you would. Is that Mark Savard? I don't know. Left-handed shot, 91, And then there's the hit. All right, this is from 2010. This is before they changed the rules. And Marc Savard is about to take, look at that, that is a brutal headshot. And he would only, after that, play 32 more games in the National Hockey League.

And he would have to retire with post-concussion issues. And then, okay, I think we got another one. Well, I mean, here we are in the middle of the Panthers and the Leafs, so why don't we show the one from the other night where the Leafs goaltender, Anthony Stolarz, got it from a guy who we all loved when he was playing in the Four Nations because he was playing so well for Canada. But here's Sam Bennett. Okay, let's roll that one, children. with Donna then able to keep it away from Reinhardt.

Oh, oh, good hit by Hagel and a penalty. Echblad's gonna come right down the boards. Oh man, he gets his forearm right into the chin of Hagel. Generate much, the two best chances, tight around, oh it wasn't the knee, it was the forearm that went. Don't see an arm up. Okay, that was Bennett at the end there obviously and then Ekblad on Hagel for the first hit. Ken, how, you know, the game has tried,

the game says it's trying to get these kinds of hits out of the game. How much success are they having? Well, it's doing a great job, eh? Doing a great job of that right now. We've only seen a couple of them so far, and this playoff has been littered with them. Yeah, I mean, they are trying. Yes, they are trying.

And that first hit that you showed on Marks of Ard was the genesis of Rule 48, which governs headshots. And yes, they are doing a better job of governing against headshots. But on that Aaron Echblad shot that you referenced first, there was no penalty called on that play. Or on the Sam Bennett one. Or on the Sam Bennett one. There was no penalty called on that play. And Sam Bennett, two years and one day after he knocked Matthew Knives out of a series with basically a body slam and a nice knee to the head, got a minor penalty for that. And guess who the two referees were in that game?

Same ones. Same ones as were the referees the other night against Dollars. Yeah, I mean, Sam Bennett, I mean, if it were any other player, if it were literally any other player, except maybe Brad Marshawn we'd be saying okay maybe but Sam Bennett I mean why does Sam Bennett end up in these situations all the time all the time Ryan tell me do you think they're doing a good faith effort to get those kinds of headshots out of the game yeah I do I think they are and I think that's why you saw suspensions for

two of the three clips you showed for the postseason. I think Sam Bennett once should have been penalized. I don't know whether I think it crosses the threshold for suspension if it's called appropriately on the ice. And I think there's important context there that, you know, he takes a heavy shot to the face minutes before that. He stays in the game, the least medical staff doesn't pull him. He's then later puking and leaving to the hospital. I don't know how you sift through and assign which hit was the one that hurt him, but yeah, you place your forearm on a goaltender's head area in the crease. I mean, that's a penalty. So that's just a missed call from the official. I think it'd be foolish to compare the, I guess, power of that blow to what Aaron Echblad delivered, because one's full speed and following through and the other's a light bump to someone that may have

just already suffered a concussion. But yeah, I think the league's trying, but I also think players aren't dumb and they understand that intimidation is a part of the formula in the playoffs. Ken, quick follow-up here? Well, a quick follow up in that, not only are they missing these calls, not only are they not being dealt with, these players are being rewarded. Aaron Echblad, in that game against the Tampa Bay Lightning, came back to score the tying goal in that game,

and the Florida Panthers went on to win in overtime. That could have changed, that could very well have changed the complexion of that series. And as far as Sam Bennett's concerned, Sam Bennett has a cap hit of $4.4 million and he's an unrestricted free agent this year. That cap hit is going to go up to $7 or $8 million on a max deal. He is going to be rewarded.

He's going to be rewarded for the way he plays the game because all these people who are clicking their tongues and wagging their fingers at him all want him on their team and there's going to be a conga line to sign this guy in the offseason. Mary, what's your view on whether the league is taking a genuine good faith effort to get this stuff out of the game? A couple of things. A tripping penalty in hockey can be accidental, right? Not intentional. High stick can be accidental, not intentional. Why isn't any

hit to the head in that cylinder that goes around your head any hit that's incidental, accidental? Why is that not an automatic penalty? I would think that would be something that would be a little tweak to a rule, accidental or not. It's a penalty and maybe that's some way to say, here's how serious we are. And I will also say, athletes are smart. They are smarter than you think. They can learn. They will know this is not a thing you could do if you sort

of tweak those sorts of rules. And they would follow that rule. Sean, how do you see it? Yeah, I mean, I do think we have to give the lead credit. That first clip you showed of that horrific hit on Mark Savard, that hit at the time was legal. There was nothing in the rule book that said you couldn't hit a guy like that and the NHL eventually made changes and now a hit like that would be a massive suspension.

But Mary's right, they haven't gone as far as some would like them to go and just say any hit to the head is a penalty, no questions asked. The way that they have with, I mean, you shoot the puck over the glass. It doesn't matter if you're 10 minutes into overtime, it's an automatic penalty, but you hit a guy in the head and suddenly we're all trying to slice it thin. And that's what the league has tried to do. We've heard terms like principle point of contact and now that's kind of out. And, you know, there's other ways to look at it. I think the league is here, even though they have made good progress, they are

very concerned about unintended consequences. They're very concerned about if we say no more hits to the head, do we suddenly find out that these are maybe they're more common or maybe they're harder to avoid, or maybe the result is players just stop hitting altogether and then what does that do to the entertainment value of the product? And so this league, whether it's hitting or player safety or a million other issues, they always tend to go a little bit slower than you might like them to. They're very conservative by nature, small C conservative, and they don't want to anything

that's going to have an unintended consequence down the line. Because one thing I think they do understand is if you make a big splashy change for player safety and it doesn't work out the way you want, it's very, very hard to go back. It's very, very hard to be allowed to do that. So I think they've been very cautious. Has it been too cautious? There's a good argument to be made. Let's do one last round here as we finish up our discussion, and whether we're talking about fighting or headshots,

I guess I want to get a better understanding of this. This is a game played by guys who are going at incredible speeds, who are, almost all of whom, over six feet tall over 200 pounds in a relatively small enclosed? space with glass and boards and And it's not I mean, let's We know this it's not like any other sport in the world in the way that it sets up The conditions under which this game is played

It can is it just a reality given all of that that we're going to see fighting and we're going to see headshots because that's what happens when you put 10 testosterone filled young men on the ice at the same time? Well we are going to see it but I wouldn't suggest. So in other words there's nothing you can do about it are going to see it. But I wouldn't suggest... In other words, there's nothing you can do about it. No, no, no. I wouldn't suggest it's for that reason. I would suggest that, you know, a lot of people talk about this being a nuanced,

complex, you know, conversation, debate, whatever. It's not. Either you're prepared to live with it, or you're not. Either you're prepared to live with these hits, and prepared to live with it or you're not. Either you're prepared to live with these hits and prepared to live with fighting or you're not. It would be very easy for the NHL to take it out. All they have to do is have the conviction to do it. And the problem is, the reason why we're not going to see that happen, is that the league is

primarily still run by players who played that style of game. I mean, the director of player safety is George Perros, who was a goon, who had a clothing line called Violent Gentlemen that made hats that said make hockey violent again. That is the guy who's running the safety department at the NHL. Can he also went to Princeton? He also went to Princeton.

Good, put him on the business side of the NHL and see what he can do. Ryan Pinder, come on in and tell me your view on this. Well, you mentioned the business side. I think whether Ken likes it or not, I think he can understand that a huge quotient of the entertainment value of the sport is its physicality. And there isn't a silver bullet to remove head injuries.

Yes, you could ban fighting. But clean hits can lead to head traumas. You don't have to have a principal point of contact to the head to give someone whiplash or to have someone's brain shake around. If we see physicality as a key ingredient to the sport, which I do, there's no way to bubble wrap it and say, geez, there's this risk that someone might have this horrible injury. That's a part of every contact sport. I mean, I don't hear car racing people talking about, man, one time someone might actually roll over in a car and something bad happened to ruin racing. I mean, we understand that's an inherent risk

of playing a contact sport that people can get hurt. So, you know, a final statement on it. I mean, I think fighting's come a long way in the right direction. We know a lot more than we used to. We all fear what Ken fears, which is a catastrophic injury, but we also really like the entertainment of physical sport. Sean? Yeah, I think that this is something the NHL is struggling with. Every sport struggles with it, right? We see in the NFL, there's this big push, keep the quarterback safe. That doesn't

mean no quarterback injuries because that's impossible. Ryan mentioned car racing. They do all sorts of things on the technology side and otherwise to keep that safe. Doesn't mean there's no crashes. That's not possible. I don't think you're ever going to have an NHL where there are no head injuries, where there is no risk because of exactly what you say, Steve. I mean, this is big guys with knives on their feet, moving faster than any other athletes and slamming into each other. The question for me is when that, and unfortunately I agree with Ken here, the inevitable happens and something really, really bad happens, does the NHL in the aftermath of that say, we did everything we reasonably could have to avoid this and it still happened?

Or are they open to people saying why was this allowed why was somebody allowed to be put in this situation you could have done more you could have avoided it last word to Mary you were talking about speed and strength within the confines of the arena the NFL and the NBA also had those discussions about our guys are getting bigger and stronger and especially in the NBA what do we do about it. So those two sports were tweaking rules as John mentioned too, you know how do you keep the quarterback safe and other things.

But if those massive money generating sports can deal with it and both of them the NBA and the NFL have zero tolerance for fighting, if you fight you're rejected. I still think at the end of the day the NHL could have a zero tolerance for fighting. If you fight, you're rejected. I still think at the end of the day, the NHL could have a zero tolerance of fighting. You can fight, but you'll be ejected. And I'm wondering if there would be some sort of a domino effect in that way. Do people start to take it a little more seriously about how do I approach the violent part of hockey and hitting and of course contact and all that so you got two examples there you know NBA NFL why can't hockey do the same we

leave that question in the ether for people to consider as we thank all four of you for coming into TVO tonight and helping us out with this very timely discussion Ryan Pinder Sean McIndoe, Mary Ormsby, Ken Campbell. Thanks so much, everybody. And of course, as we say in the province of Alberta, go Leafs Go. Ha ha ha ha. This is not the oiler. Ha ha ha ha.