It’s nice to see that somebody still gets it. Way to go, Gordo!!

Great article, and I agree 100 percent. The instigator rule needs to go so that responsible enforcers can be effective. Many in the media currently label enforcers as goons with their fights being looked at as staged sideshow acts. Enforcers currently are stuck fighting each other more often for momentum reasons than as a deterrence.

However, enforcers still matter. Look at the hit Richards layed on Booth in the Flyers/Panthers game. Florida has no enforcer and commonly sees their players getting flattened left and right. Richards just put one of their stars out for months with that blindside hit. If Florida had a Boogaard or Brashear on their team, Richards may have thought twice before taking a run at Booth.

Watch the YouTube video regarding Ott and the Boston Bruins last year. He was a first class pest, ran people, and the Bruins went after him including fights. The refs didn’t call any instigator penalties, that wasn’t a restraint, and yet “enforcers” never stopped Ott, because that’s where he gets his $. Finally it took the refs to through him out, it wasn’t retribution or the “code”.

If you think enforcers stop guys like Ott then you are not watching the games, there are too many career pests skating around earning a million plus per year, if retribution was clearly a difference maker that would not be the case. It’s the money for playing that role, not the instigator rule that allows them to persist. With or without the latter, as long as you have the former you will have guys like Ott.

The way to stop Ott isn’t beating him up; its letting the Stars know you will run their top guys. Then Crawford shuts Ott down, not before. Interestingly, a decent percentage of NHL coaches were that 4th line type of borderline player/pest, including Crawford during his playing days.

I agree, those were the good ole days, however we cant sit back and wish for those days, and lose games during the pity party. We have to play by the rules that are in place now.

I agree with scott and Gordo. Enforcers aren’t able to fulfill their role when they are always worried about the instigator rule. I also don’t like it that enforcers make it a rule to go after the “pest” that started everything. That’s what the “pest” wants. They key is to go after the other teams top players and then to have your enforcers there to clean everything up once it gets out of hand. The best way to get the attention of a team that is taking cheap shots is to show them that their top players will take some serious punishment if they keep it up (it doesn’t have to be dirty either).

I have to disagree. It’s not the instigator rule that needs to be discarded, it’s the ‘enforcers’. Hockey should be about scoring, passing, skating, and clean hitting. There’s no room in the NHL for 4th line players whose only contribution is fighting and dirty hits.

The League needs to contract team rosters by getting rid of these players. Suspensions and fines will work if they’re high enough. I’m talking six-figure fines against the team, and lifetime player bans for this sh*t. Guys like Ott would be history in a short time.

My $.02:
This kind of dirty hitting reached its apex in the 90’s with Detroit and Vladimir Konstantinov. He and several of his teammates (Darren McCarty and Kris Draper, most notably) got reputations as “pesky” players, when in reality, the officiating was notoriously pathetic (and still is) and these cr&p players were getting away with cheap hits, illegal stick use, and a lot more.
The upshot is that, under Gary Bettman, this kind of play became the status quo for the top teams. If guys were clever and creative enough to use their stick to take off a guy’s head and not have it be obvious, or take out a guy’s knee by ducking at the last second, then everything was okay to Andy Van Hellemond’s group.
My point is, the enforcer question is a lot more complicated than Gordo or any poster here is addressing. Are fights entertaining? Yes. Do they serve a purpose? Only to the extent that an enforcer is also an excellent checker. Old enforcers didn’t just drop the gloves; they also put a hit on you, open-ice or against the boards, that you didn’t soon forget. (Bob Probert comes to mind.) Today, enforcers don’t do that, and the goon-type players, like Todd Bertuzzi and Sean Avery, who are out there playing dirty get their wrists slapped by the league for getting their sticks up around the head and injuring guys. The honor lost is by certain players who aren’t enforcers, and by the league front office being completely insulated from the game, and therein is the problem.

It’s a shame that we can’t suit up the marketing people that the Blues hired. They really have the best game going in town. Way to go guys!
Fill our heads full of: “No one will work harder than the Blues”.
It’s time to scold our “Baby Blues”. They’re all grown up now. no excuses for not crashing the net. Where is Tkachuk? The invisible man!
Boring hockey folks. This team has no personality at all.