National Hockey League

Impacts of Violence in NHL on players and NHL's Initiatives for Player Safety

Impacts of Violence in NHL on players and NHL's Initiatives for Player Safety

Introduction

The concept of 'sports violence' or fighting in sports is obscure. Like other facets of the social process, such as the family, culture or crime, everyone is at a loss to give a definition for these elements of the social process. This phenomenon also holds true for sports organizations and those associated policing sport, including the courts.

Sports violence is conceived to fall in two categories — player violence and crowd violence (which often involves both crimes against persons and property). In fact, if the conventional parameters of sports violence are broadened to include aggressive, violent or otherwise harmful acts related to sport, it becomes clear that the subject may be far more diverse than normally understood.

Discussion and Analysis

A hockey player enters onto the ice of the National Hockey League, fully aware of the likelihood of getting hit in any one of the various ways of getting hit. This concludes that on ice hitting and violence is an ordinary happening (Horrow, 1980).

Perhaps more than any other single act of player violence, fist-fighting in ice hockey has been comprehensively researched (Bloom and Smith, 1996). It has been a common court response to fight-related injuries to acquit defendants on similar grounds of consent. This has been true at both professional and amateur levels in Canada. Horrow (1980) cites the Ontario case of R. v. Starratt, where the court argued that fist-fighting was so frequent in the NHL as to be viewed 'normal' as long as the force of the fight 'does not exceed that level authorized by the other players'. More recent Canadian cases are detailed by Young and Wamsley (1996).

The NHL has earned praise ...