And then there's the guy in charge of the music, doing nothing but trying to ramp them up!!!

Come on *Canada get your shit together. Bunch of fuckin' savages

I am however interested in knowing what kicked off a pre game team wide brawl.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Key members of a Ligue Nord-Américaine de Hockey (LNAH) franchise have been suspended until the end of the 2016-17 playoffs following a hot-tempered brawl during the pre-game warmup on Sunday.

The Laval Predators, who play in the infamously fight-happy LNAH, were involved in a melee before the puck drop on a game against the St-Georges Cool-FM.

Predators co-owner Eric Lajeunesse, CEO Lucien Paquette and assistant coach Dannick Lessard all received two-season bans on Tuesday.

The eight-team, Quebec-based LNAH, which is considered a "low-level professional league", is known for its outrageous behaviour, with footage of a bizarre on-ice scene going viral seemingly every other month.

Other supplemental discipline, announced on Wednesday, include:

LAVAL: Maxime Bouchard and Clint Butler (suspended for remainder of season/playoffs); Steven Oligny (7 games); Joe Rullier and Chris Cloutier (6 games); Philippe Pepin (5 games); Jonathan Oligny (4 games)

ST-GEORGES: Yannick Dallaire (3 games); Alexandre Gauthier and Jean-Michel Biron (2 games)

http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Hockey/2015/01/14/22180411.html

Adding video to channels (Canada) - requested by eric3579.

I have to say i was kinda in excited anticipation for the blows to start flying at the (music) drop @ around 38 sec. and 1:08. That would have been the icing on the cake.

"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.

That's not the NHL =P

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.

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.

Thanks for pointing out the NHL discrepancy. Will fix.

@MilkmanDan

Interesting. The Economist had a bit this week arguing that some violence (fistfights) seem to be treated much more lightly than violence with sticks, which usually leads to suspensions even though arguably you could have a no tolerance policy for both (or at least be consistently harsh).

http://www.economist.com/news/international/21639527-courts-are-increasingly-being-asked-rule-injuries-inflicted-during-games-fair-game

Is the referee's job to look like he is trying to break people up but to actually count blows landed/thrown?

Oh, fistfights are definitely treated differently than stick violence. Mild stick-related stuff (taking a short chop at someone with the stick is called a slash, tripping is self explanatory, leading a check/hit with the stick can be charging or a cross check, etc.) is usually given a 2 minute minor penalty. But if you go nuts and just try to lumberjack somebody with your stick (extremely rare, but happens every once in a while), it is treated very harshly with a likely LONG suspension. All that seems pretty well-handled to me -- if your slash or cross check or whatever is is a risky situation that can or does result in injury, those scale up from minor penalties into majors, game misconducts, or possible suspensions.

Fights are a 5 minute major penalty, assuming both sides/fighters intentionally got into it. However, both involved players get the same 5 minute penalty, so since they are coincidental it doesn't result in any actual penalty to the team (not down to 4 players instead of 5 like in a normal penalty) other than the player who was in the fight being unavailable for 5 minutes. A pretty high majority of players who get into fights are designated goons who might be on the ice for 1-3 minutes total of a 60 minute game, compared to 15-17 for a skilled forward or 20+ for a skilled defenseman. So, "losing" that player for 5 minutes is usually really no penalty at all.

However, the "code" of those enforcers/goons is actually a pretty real thing. Many fights (especially in the regular season) are actually a pre-planned thing between the enforcers on each team. They ask if the other guy is up for a fight, as a means to engage the crowd and/or their teammates. If both are up for it, the next time they line up for a faceoff or whatever they will probably contrive some offense and drop the gloves. Those fights are pretty silly, but both sides know what they are getting into and agree to it beforehand, so it isn't SO crazy.

Spontaneous fights usually happen when an average or lesser-skilled player makes a dangerous hit or dirty play against a skilled player on the opposing team. If that happens, their toughest teammate currently on the ice will likely rush to their defense, and if it appears like the offending player did it intentionally they will drop the gloves to "teach them a lesson". These fights seem much more purposeful to me, and if you ask great skilled players like Wayne Gretzky they almost all universally say that this system made things safer and opened up the ice for skilled players.

So, it is all pretty complicated and strange to the uninitiated, but there is a sort of method to the madness.

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.

Hrmmm, hockey can be a brutal full contact sport with explosive mid-ice collisions and teeth rattling board checking. Any of those hits could be career ending, life altering, and even deadly. What is the concern about a few punches to the face?

Because one is done with the sole intent to cause injury. That's pretty significant. Also, a *real* solid, bare knuckle punch to the face by a large athelete that knows how to throw a punch is an exceptionally dangerous, easily lethal thing. That's why they pull their punches (not to say they aren't hitting each other pretty hard all the same), and what is really the worst aspect of the whole thing. The players are clearly encouraged, if not out right obligated to fight.

As I understand it, long term, ice hockey is actually one of the safer of the full contact sports. While it's hardly safe in the general sense, it's not like the NFL or professional boxing where players can almost as a rule expect chronic traumatic encephalopathy and severe osteoarthritis as a result of their careers.

Wiki on hockey violence and players being charged with crimes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_in_ice_hockey

As a former hockey player I'll have to disagree with most of your comment. There is rarely any attempt to injure in a hockey fight and I've never heard of any hockey player pulling punches. The objective is to be perceived to have won the fight to help get your teammates and fans hyped up or to have taught a lesson. To that end you try your best to hit your hardest. Unfortunately Newton's pesky third law of motion comes into play and makes it very difficult to deliver any really dangerous blows. That's why hockey fighters always hang on to their opponents jersey so they don't drift apart or fall down.

As pointed out the worst common injuries in Hockey come from high speed blows to the head or stick injuries such as to the eye. The worst uncommon injury is a skate blade to the neck. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ295luzhtQ

All that being said, the kind of fighting in this video is stupid and boring to me. If I want to see that I'll rent "Slapshot".

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".

There's talk of allowing fighting? These are sportsmen, people who get to play a game for a living. What do they have to fight about? Play the damn game and act like grownups.