Scorecard

THE GAME'S THE THING

There has been discussion this season about the philosophy of hockey. Everyone who knows the game accepts its roughness: you get hurt playing hockey, and a man who can neither dish it out nor take it belongs in a less violent environment. But the roughness of the game—body checks, falls, cuts, bruises, occasional flare-ups of temper—degenerated in recent years, according to one school of thought, into a cheap comedy of semistaged mass fights. The swift, piercing grace would suddenly stagnate while players on both teams scattered gloves over the ice and stood pulling on one another's shirts, vainly flailing away with tedious and seldom effective punches. Yet crowds, particularly in some American cities, seemed to love the spectacle, and penurious owners encouraged the brawls.

Finally, hockey officialdom stepped in and instituted stricter rules. Now, if two players square off, a certain patience is exercised. But if third parties join in, they are immediately penalized. The incidence of brawls has declined dramatically. One NHL player says, "A lot of those guys who used to start fights won't get in them now because they know nobody's going to come and help them."

Some critics bemoan all this, saying the new rules have softened the players and the game. The embryonic World Hockey Association (page 20), which is hoping to start play next season, has said it not only will not crack down on fighting, it will encourage it, the implication being that hockey's popularity depends to a considerable degree on such donnybrooks.

Maybe so, but a recent Toronto Star poll indicates the opposite. When the Star asked if NHL players should be automatically thrown out of a game for fighting (the current stringent rules do not go nearly that far), 66% of its readers voted yes. If Canadians know a great deal about their national sport and care deeply for it, such an overwhelming vote against hockey brawls must have significance.