Puckarinen

The Globe and Mail ran a story about a poll today:

A Harris-Decima survey conducted during the NHL all-star weekend indicates 54 per cent of respondents think fighting should be ousted from the league. The poll suggests only 40 per cent of Canadians believe fisticuffs should stay in the game.
The survey of just more than 1,000 people was conducted between last Thursday and Sunday and has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
Quebecers — at 62 per cent — oppose fighting far more than residents of any other region in Canada.
Still, 68 per cent of NHL fans who follow the NHL closely say the gloves should continue to drop.

They ran it with this headline: "NHL should ban fighting: poll".

The same Canadian Press story was also run in other media outlets.

"Slim majority want fight ban", "Majority of Canadians want to ban hockey fights", and so on. And then in the comments of the stories, the pro-fight people flame the non-fight people, and close the door from any discussion with the same ole arguments: "It's a part of the game, it keeps the game clean, and besides, why don't you switch to (in Europe) soccer."

And the discussion never goes anywhere. See here.

It's a dead end when top people in hockey endorse the fighting even if just by their silence. Of course we could get rid of fighting, if we just wanted to. The problem is that even if 54 percent, or 65 percent of people would want it, "[s]till, 68 per cent of NHL fans who follow the NHL closely say the gloves should continue to drop."

I find it frustrating, the glorification of the "ice fighters" really makes me sad, and the agrarian 19th century subculture stupefies me - it's easy to come up with a list of things that people had "always done", but never do anymore. That's called progress.

And just for the record, and before I hear that one last argument: I am a person who does leave the stands when there is a fight on the ice.