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Olympic hockey — the game as it should be played?

Canada is hockey. As a nation we are very modest, but after bringing home both Olympic gold medals in men's and women's hockey we can beat our chests a little.
opinion_editorial1

Canada is hockey.

As a nation we are very modest, but after bringing home both Olympic gold medals in men's and women's hockey we can beat our chests a little.

(Canada is also clearly curling, as we took both gold medals in that sport as well!)

In Whistler, just like across Canada, we paused from whatever we were doing to watch, or catch up with the scores as the elimination games took place in Olympic hockey.

When the women's team snatched victory from the jaws of defeat at the hands of the U.S., the cheers could be heard from coast to coast.

Last Sunday, Feb. 23, people gathered in homes, local watering holes and even at the sub-zero Whistler Olympic Plaza to cheer on Canada's men's team as it faced Sweden in the final face-off. While not a nail biter, as the game was in Vancouver in 2010 when Team Canada faced the U.S., it was still a beautifully executed piece of sport.

And we cheered — loudly.

Crosby flew down the ice and scored on a break away — we cheered.

Goaltender Carey Price had a shut out — we cheered.

The defensive play was spectacular — we cheered.

Team players didn't throw their sticks to the ice and break into a punch up — we... didn't notice/didn't care/didn't miss the fighting?

Canada, 15 million of us, just watched our men's team become the first back-to-back gold medal winner since the NHL began sending its members in 1998. It was the first time Canada won gold in two straight Games since 1948 and 1952.

And it was all done without a single fight.

It's not that there weren't moments when you could see players skate a little too close to each other, or exchange a meaningful look, but they knew the rules and they are, after all, professionals. They were there to play and there to win.

It begs the question then why doesn't the game get rid of fighting in its regular season?

There is no doubt fighting has long been part of the game in North America, and has acted as a draw for the sport in attracting spectators for the game. Some argue it also helps cement the players as a team.

In 1922 the NHL, in recognizing that fighting was here to stay, introduced Rule 56 — it formally regulated fighting, or "fisticuffs" as it was called in the official NHL rulebook. Rather than ejecting players from the game, as was the practice in amateur and collegiate hockey, players were given a five-minute major penalty.

In the current NHL rulebook, the archaic reference to "fisticuffs" has been removed; fighting is now governed under Rule 46 and referees are given considerable latitude in determining what exactly constitutes a fight, and what penalties are applicable to the participants.

Today, it is all too frequent to see the fans in the stands jump to their feet cheering on the enforcer for their team, as the game dissolves into gladiator-style fighting.

We have even seen the cheering continue as the combatants sometimes stagger from the ice. Some players don't come back... ever.

Concussion has become a workplace risk for the NHL and we are hearing about it more and more in amateur levels as well.

Let's not forget that even the players these days are bigger than they were 20 years ago. Reggie Fleming fought in the 1960s — he was 5-foot-10, 190 pounds. The heavyweight champion of hockey that decade, John Ferguson, weighed 178 pounds when he played for the Montreal Canadiens. Today the Canadiens George Parros is 6-foot-5, 228, and there are lots of other players in the same league.

Dr. Michael Cusimano is a neurosurgeon at St. Michael's Hospital, a researcher in the hospital's Keenan Research Centre for Biomedical Science, and a professor of neurosurgery, education and public health at the University of Toronto.

In the Globe and Mail last month he wrote, "In Canada, ice hockey is the main cause of sports-related traumatic brain injuries, such as concussions. My own research has found there are slightly more than five concussions for every 100 NHL games. There are 60,000 to 70,000 hockey-related concussions in Canada altogether every year. (There are 570,000 players registered with Hockey Canada).

"We also know that for young people, the risk of suffering a concussion rises as soon as body contact is allowed. In Ontario, that's in the Atom league of nine- and 10-year-olds."

But banning fighting in the NHL is a polarizing issue for Canada, and the lines are fluid depending on who is doing the talking.

An Angus Reid poll in 2013 suggested that more than two thirds of Canadian hockey fans support banning fighting at all levels of the sport, but many current and former players don't even consider it a debate worth having.

"I hate that it's even being talked about," Buffalo Sabres captain Steve Ott told the Associated Press last November. "It's absolutely ridiculous even the notion of fighting being taken out. What a terrible mindset."

Times are changing though. It used to be that teams were mostly Canadian players, but today only about 52 per cent of the players are Canadian, the rest are coming from international leagues — where fighting is banned.

In the end though there is no escaping that it is about the players as people, and it is about Canada's game, hockey, not just about profits. It is about doing the right thing.

If a whole nation, in fact the global hockey-playing community, can spend two weeks battling for Olympic gold without a single on-ice fight why can't we simply embrace that type of play throughout the sport and cheer on the playing, not the fighting.