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.

Your video, Hockey Fights now available pre-game! Full-teams included!, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

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.

"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.

Canadians ruining the great sport of hockey
http://videosift.com/video/Hockey-Fights-now-available-pre-game-Full-teams-included

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

For me gym class (or PE as we called it!) wasn't about teaching anything, it was about humiliating me into feeling incapable of even trying to take part. If you weren't already good at sports, the teachers couldn't give a shit about you, happy to leave less-able students to flounder while paying all attention to the boys who could play well already. I was not taught how to play cricket, or football, or tennis, or hockey, or how to use exercise equipment; no ball skills or batting technique; it was assumed people knew how to play already and no instruction was given. The teacher's role was to be referee. Fucking hated it, and it's ruined sports/keep-fit for me for life.

That's what makes it perfect. Hockey gets in the way of enjoying the pure element.

Since we're talking about things that hover over specially-prepared floors, we might as well talk about gas film levitation (think: air hockey) that can be used to levitate very heavy objects on a smooth floor. It's used to test spacecraft docking in earthbound laboratories, for example. I'm sure someone's tried a skateboard-like platform at some point. This mag-lev system is pretty cool however, as is the shiny copper floor.

How is this a myth? What is the supposed content of this myth? And the video? Some people throw like girls, then throw even more like girls with their other hand. Then this lady comes up who can throw and is commended for throwing like a man. What?

If you are a man and someone says you throw or run like a girl everyone understands what that means. It means they want to find out if you also fight like a girl.

If you are a girl and you do something like a girl - that doesnt actually merit conversation. Or insult. Ambiguity overload. Could mean anything.

Throwing with your left hand. That has more to do with your favored hand and favored eye than practice and technique. My younger son is right handed but has a dominant left eye. He can hit a target equally well with either hand, same "form". He can probably throw a bit farther with his right hand but not by much. Not so good trying to aim a gun - try holding a weapon in your right hand and aim with your left eye. He shoots like a girl (yes I know there are many girls who can shoot) but he can throw like a man with both hands. For basketball, tennis, ice-hockey, soccer - very useful to be ambidextrous. Probably also skiing, snowboarding, surfing, because you care less about which way you are turning.

Why would you want to take practice and technique out of the equation anyway - throwing like a girl is not just about strength, it´s about attitude and motivation and will to compete. And technique.

And girls very obviously have different techniques to men in sports that rely a lot on strength and aggresivity. Some girls practice with men and apply masculine techniques, others try to find their own way. No one tells Sharapova that she hits the ball like a girl - but that is certainly exactly what she does, compared to Nadal, no insult intended.

Andy Murray now has a female coach, I am sure he will be very careful not to appear to be hitting the ball like a girl.

If you have the same equipment and strength matters you cant help having a different technique.

If all that matters is skill (lets say youre throwing a light ball a short distance at a target) I would expect not much gender difference.

You can demonstrate the effect of carbon dioxide on climate as easily as dropping a ball from your hand? People know that balls will drop because the see it for themselves, not because a former physicist and his dog say so.

In actual fact, the earth has not warmed in nearly 20 years, and the climate models do not help to explain this. They are useless for explaining or predicting changes on the scale of decades, and it's crazy to expect them to somehow predict changes much further in the future.

Warmism, from the start, has been based on obfuscation, concealment of data, dodgy statistics, and overcomplicated computer models that add very little to insight into the real physical phenomena.

Remember the hockey stick? That went the way of Carl Sagan's nuclear winter, which ought to provide a cautionary tale for Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Your child's future will have many problems, one of them being depletion of the fossil fuel supplies that we have come to rely upon for sustenance. Climate will change, as it always has, and some of that change will be caused by CO2.
Climate science could be helpful; it's a pity that it has been distorted into a completely political exercise, and a shame for science generally, which stands to lose a great deal of public trust.

The Lord of the manner was respected too, back when he was the 1%. But that caused the handle on her stupid hockey stick. Nice how she carefully dismisses exploitation then tries to slip that one by.