Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure if he should take credit, or give credit for this story.

Yesterday, your Maximum Leader agreed with the Irish Elk that there needed to be more fighting in hockey…

Last night is the Sabres v. Senators game… 163 penalty minutes doled out for fighting…

Beauty, eh?

Okay… Okay… This isn’t exactly the type of fight your Maximum Leader or the Irish Elk (if your Maximum Leader may presume to speak for him) were talking about. Your Maximum Leader is all for have some “enforcers” out on the ice from time to time to “clear the ice” for your star players to be star players. In one of the linked articles (in the previous post) Rob Simpson (of the Netminders blog) provides some good thoughts and a good anecdote on the subect. It goes:

Instigator rule when Gretzky ruled the ice!? Ahhh no. When Gretzky was piling up points at an unheard of rate, he had a Mr. Dave Semenko on his wing, and later a Mr. Marty McSorley on his wing, to “create some room on the ice” for Mr. Gretzky. Cheap shot Wayner… hello Mr. Semenko. Think that was a deterrent. Yes, yes, yes. Mr. Semenko could dish out justice whenever necessary because there was no instigator penalty. A fight was a fight… and usually justified. If the heavyweights wanted to “go” for some entertainment or to get the team going, no instigator. Wayner doesn’t break the records, Wayner’s possibly not the “Great One”, if Wayner doesn’t have protection. Anyone who thinks he would have skated around unscathed without protection is living in a absolute fantasy world. He wasn’t Howe, a guy who provided his own protection. Toughest guy/leading scorer combo’s (as the same guy) are extremely rare. If every leading scorer was also the most intimidating guy on the ice, then I guess the instigator rule wouldn’t matter.

Kevin Paul Dupont recently told a story in one of his columns about former NHLer Tom Laidlaw (I think it was Laidlaw) who told a good Semenko story. (paraphrasing) Laidlaw hit Gretzky. Gretzky went down. Semenko came off the bench moments later and said to Tom “you’re not planning on doing that again are you Tom?”. Laidlaw, said, “umm, no, I think that’s it.” A story which shows an example of “creating room on the ice”; a dormant, formerly common, term in hockey.

For those of you not familiar with the “instigator” rule, it is essentially a recent rule added to hockey that calls for increasing penalty time followed by game suspensions for players who “instigate” fights.

Insofar as your Maximum Leader is concerned, there is a place for fighting in hockey. Unfortunately, the Commissioner and NHL Board of Governor don’t seem to agree.

Carry on.