Those were both interesting to see and helped me establish some of the pros/cons of the goalie playing aggressively like that -- thanks!

It is quite similar in many ways to NHL goalies. In hockey, an aggressive goalie will skate relatively far out of their net to cut down the angle on shots from the periphery -- but that can go very wrong if the opposing team can sneak in behind them and get a shot on an essentially empty net. Like the hockey equivalent of the second video there.

And some hockey goalies pride themselves on being able to play the puck; accurately pass it up and out of their half of the ice, contributing to offense (but usually 2-3 or more passes removed from a shot attempt), etc. Some goalies *want* to be good at that, but end up just getting themselves into trouble. In that first video, Neuer looks like one of the NHL goalies that likes to play that way AND is actually good at it -- I'll think of him as the football equivalent of Martin Brodeur from the NHL, maybe.

Thanks again for going out of the way to enlighten me. I've got lots of friends here in Thailand (native Thais as well as Brits and Europeans) that are big into football while I'm usually pretty clueless. I tend to relate to football through the lens of hockey, as I'm sure you can tell. But it is good to get a bit better informed.

You almost never hear of an NHL player being upset (in a litigation sort of way) about injuries they got that resulted from fighting (drop the gloves and throw punches).

In general, the one major incident I am aware of that resulted in legal action being taken against a player was when Todd Bertuzzi checked Steve Moore down the the ice from behind and then drove his head/neck into the ice with his stick in some heavy followup hits. This is mentioned in the wikipedia article @eric3579 posted, and hinted at in the article @RedSky posted from the Economist.

In that incident, Steve Moore (a lower-level player on the Colorado Avalanche) had hit Marcus Naslund (a star level player of the Vancouver Canucks) in a previous game. That hit was a fairly normal hockey hit -- Naslund had the puck, Moore intentionally hit him to try to separate him from the puck, but arguably led with his elbow to Naslund's head. It was a dangerous play, that should have be penalized (it wasn't) -- although I don't think Moore intended to cause injury. It is a fast game, sometimes you can't react quick enough to avoid a dangerous collision like that. Still, I think that kind of play should be penalized to make it clear to players that they need to avoid dangerous plays if possible. Steve Moore didn't have a history of dirty or dangerous play, but still.

Anyway, all of that dovetails in pretty nicely with my previous post, specifically about what leads to a "spontaneous fight". Moore, a 3-4th line guy (lower ranks of skill/ability on the team) hit star player Naslund. In almost ANY hockey game where that kind of thing happens, you can expect that somebody from the star's team is going to go over to the offending player and push them around, probably with the intent to fight them. Usually it happens right at the time of the incident, but here it was delayed to a following game between the two teams.

In the next game between Colorado and Vancouver, Moore got challenged by a Vancouver player early in the first period and fought him. But I guess that the lag time and injury to Naslund (he ended up missing 3 games) had brewed up more bad blood than that so many Vancouver players hadn't gotten it fully out of their systems. Later in the game, Todd Bertuzzi skated up behind Moore when he didn't have the puck, grabbed him and tailed him for several seconds trying to get him into a second fight, and when he didn't respond just hauled back and punched him in the back of the head.

Moore fell to the ice, where Bertuzzi piled on him and drove his head into the ice. A big scrum/dogpile ensued, with Moore on the bottom. As a result of that, Moore fractured 3 vertebrae in his neck, stretched or tore some neck ligaments, got his face pretty cut up, etc. Pretty severe injuries.

So, in comparison:
Moore (lesser skill) hit Naslund (high skill) resulting in a minor(ish) injury, that could have ended up being much worse. But, it was a legitimate hockey play that just happened to occur at a time when Naslund was vulnerable -- arguably no intent to harm/injure.
Bertuzzi hit Moore in a following game, after he had already "answered" for his hit on Naslund by fighting a Vancouver player. Bertuzzi punched him from behind and followed up with further violence, driving his head into the ice and piling on him, initiating a dogpile. Not even close to a legitimate hockey play, well away from the puck, and with pretty clear intent to harm (maybe not to injure, but to harm).


Moore sued Bertuzzi, his team (the Canucks), and the NHL. Bertuzzi claimed that his coach had put a "bounty" on Moore, and that he hadn't intended to injure him -- just to get back at him for his hit on Naslund. Bertuzzi was suspended for a fairly long span of time, and his team was fined $250,000. The lawsuit was kind of on pause for a long time to gauge the long-term effects on Moore, but was eventually settled out of court (confidential terms).

All of this stuff is or course related to violence in hockey, but only loosely tied to fighting in hockey. Some would argue (with some merit in my opinion) that if the refs had called a penalty on Moore's hit on Naslund, and allowed a Vancouver player to challenge him to a fight at that time instead of the following game, it probably wouldn't have escalated to the level it did.

So, at least in my opinion, the league (NHL) needs to be careful, consistent, and fairly harsh in handing out penalties/suspensions to players who commit dangerous plays that can or do result in injuries -- especially repeat offenders. BUT, I think that allowing fighting can actually help mitigate that kind of stuff also -- as long as the league keeps it from getting out of hand and the enforcer type players continue to follow their "code".

If I were a hockey player, and another player took a swing at me and broke my nose, could I have them charged with assault? I don't see why not.

I'm sure there's a never-mentioned clause in their contracts that tries to prevent that, but that certainly wouldn't stand up in court. Of course, the player would be blackballed for it. There will come a day, though, when in the NHL one of the enforcers will forget to adequately pull his punches and the other player will be seriously maimed. If I were that player, I'd at least go for a civil suit against the league. Maybe contracts mean more in that case, but it would be the most likely way to see an end to the suits encouraging fights.

I mean, look, here I am watching a video of a fight in a league I've never really heard of before, and I haven't even watched an NHL game in 10 years, and hockey was my primary sport growing up.

Thanks for pointing out the NHL discrepancy. Will fix.

As pointed out this has nothing to do with the NHL. And it's also not the North American Hockey League which is a separate league in its own right. This is the Ligue Nord-americain de Hockey, a Quebec semi pro league manned to a large degree by retired enforcers from the NHL and guys who never made it that far. To play in the league you have to be born in Quebec or played junior hockey there. And yes the marketing of this league is probably aimed at the UFC/WWE/WCW crowd.

Hockey is a violent sport. A lot of hockey people think that allowing fights, which in the NHL usually happen between each team's designated "goons", prevents or lessens other dirty/dangerous play that would build up with unchecked aggression that is a pretty natural part of the sport. That's an oversimplification, but one of the major justifications.

I love watching hockey. I think it is a great sport that allows for many different paths to victory -- you can have a winning team made up of fast, graceful, highly skilled players, OR cerebral, teamwork based players, OR intimidating, brute force goons. Or a mix of any/all of those.

I'm not an expert, but I'm a fan. I didn't grow up with hockey in my blood (not from Canada), but became a fan in my teens. But, I do actually see a certain amount of logic in the hockey pundits argument that fighting cuts down on other dirty play. I think that if anyone watches enough hockey, they see evidence that it is true. Maybe not quite as true as the pro-fight pundits suggest, but it is there.

Better officiating, penalties, and suspensions for the kinds of dangerous / dirty play that fighting is supposed to cut down on would help. Even though I think fighting has a place in the game, the NHL does need to evolve some more consistency in those areas.

I'm a Colorado Avalanche fan. The Avs main rival for a long time was the Detroit Red Wings, and then a former Wings player (Brendan Shanahan) became the head of player safety. His job was basically to review dirty plays or plays that resulted in an injury, and dole out warnings/suspensions/fines. He took a lot of flack for inconsistency; many people thought that in two similar incidents he might hand out a long suspension to one and a slap on the wrist to the other. But even though he was from my "rival team", I thought he did a pretty good job, and it represented a great step forward for the NHL. The thing that I thought he did really well was that for every incident he reviewed, there was always a video available on the internet showing what happened from multiple angles followed by his thoughts on it, what disciplinary action he was going to issue, and his justifications for it. Of course everyone isn't always going to agree about that kind of stuff, but he put it out in the open instead of behind closed doors.

To me, that was a big step forward for the NHL. If they continue on that path, I think it is reasonable to suggest that fighting will become less important/necessary/beneficial. But I think it will always be at least a small part of the game.

That's not the NHL =P

"I once went to a fight and a hockey game broke out"

Seriously, the NHL could stop this if they really wanted to (fines, suspensions, etc) but they know the public actually wants to see a fight.

Players aren't obligated to fight. There are usually just a couple of guys per Team that are fighters. They DO really want to hurt each other. Broken cheekbones, broken noses, broken jaws, concussions, bloody nose, ... are often the result of fights. My definition of the term staged fights in the NHL is where two fighters agree to have a fight and it's not just part of the normal flow of the game or due to something else that's happened during the course of the game. I think the main reason there are not more injuries during fights is that it's not an easy skill especially on skates. Here's a good article on the role of the enforcer in the NHL (three part series is long, but very informative)...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/sports/hockey/derek-boogaard-a-boy-learns-to-brawl.html?pagewanted=all

I'm Canadian and I don't get the appeal of NHL. It's a bunch of tax-supported multi-millionaires skating around wearing the uniform of a city that they probably don't even know -- it just happens to be the one willing to pay the money they're demanding.
Except for combat sports where there's a real risk of serious injury or death, there isn't a professional athlete anywhere who is worth their paycheque. Watch school level sports to see kids who play it for the pure love of the game...

I love the NHL, and I always get annoyed with advertising when I see Premier League Football (soccer). NHL sweaters/jerseys have some great designs, with standouts really exploring the theme/logo/imagery of the team. And then you've got Premiere League jerseys, with a MASSIVE chest logo shilling for some corporate sponsor and a tiny team logo in a font/height about 1/10th the size of that sponsor logo. No "I" in team, but apparently there are plenty of $'s.

Then again, I guess that even in the NHL there are advertising logos on every single square inch of the boards above the ice surface and under the glass.

Not to mention that damn near every single arena/field is now known as [Insert Bank/Corporation/Conglomeration name here] Center. Remember when those places used to be named for great players or coaches attached to the franchise, or some other thematic element of the team or city? I guess big props are due for Detroit's Joe Louis Arena and NYC's Madison Square Garden, the only non-shill NHL venues I can come up with off the top of my head (did I miss any?).

Sometimes I get all disgusted with how you can't go 2 goddamn seconds without having somebody try to sell you something. Yay capitalism, I guess.

Sorry, /rant off.

just wait until the NHL (and MLB, for that matter) receives the reports of CTE among their retired players, as we've seen in the NFL, and we'll soon see some major changes...

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - thumbnail added by oritteropo.

Perhaps, but this particular "bad goalie" played a few games for the Caps a few years back, and has a .936 save percentage and 1.75 GAA in the KHL this year (presumably playing against a fair number of pretty high-caliber NHL refugees), hence his playing in the all-star game there.

I doubt anyone would try that sort of move in an actual, competitive game situation, but then again I've seen some pretty wild things in the new NHL shootouts.

That was beautiful! I see the KHL branding and East vs West, so I assume it was from an All Star game or something there? (Confirmed via Google, answered my own question)

Gary Bettman and the NHLPA take months to settle a labor dispute for an expiring CBA that has been on the horizon for years, and in the meantime stuff like this is happening in the KHL. Yeah NHL, who's bush league now? I love ya, but this is why you'll never crawl out of last place in the North American "big four" sports race.