Fighting in Ice Hockey
In the United States today, our professional sports leagues, such as the NFL, NBA and NHL have many aims. The one most people think of is to entertain, but many forget that these organizations are also businesses. These leagues promote interesting play in sports to bring attention and thus more money. The National Hockey League does this in many ways. They promote good players who can shoot and score at will and goal tenders whose spines are like "slinkys", allowing them to make amazing saves. In making money off of these people, the league also influences the public, particularly children. Many children see these players on television or at the arena's and want to emulate them. I'm sure you could go to any street corner in the US in the summer and you'd have a chance to see a small child say he was Wayne Gretzky while playing roller hockey. All of these assertions so far seem fine, but when the child's friend beats him up and says he's Tie Domi, it seems the NHL has created a problem. The NHL today markets fighting in ice hockey and is now causing a lack of morals in the game. Ice hockey is a sport that was created in Canada on frozen lakes and rivers by soldiers stationed there, when they began knocking their boots a
round with the ends of their rifles. As soon as the sport was made into leagues and people started playing, there was fighting in the game. This was always because there were little restrictions on players during the game. With only three referees to such a large surface, it was and still is easy for players to get away with things without them knowing which more often than not will lead to an escalated situation. When players do fight in the pros, they are penalized with 5 minutes to sit out. With such limited consequences, fighting has become a regular occurrence in ice hockey and is seen as traditional in today's game. Fan's go to games and expect to see a fight. Then more fights, the more fans will want to go back. It is clear why the penalty for fighting is so minimal in the NHL and that is to draw in more revenue. The amount of added violence in the game of hockey today does draw in more money for team owners and league executives, however the sport is being popularized in an immoral fashion. Many teams have players whose main role on the team is to fight. Tie Domi, who plays on the Toronto Maple Leafs is a prime example. He has been in the NHL for years after a brief stint as a boxer when he was growing up. So far this year he has scored only 5 goals and 6 assists, but has managed to rack up 125 penalty minutes. Domi, who has been a known "goon" for years surprisingly, does not lead the NHL in this category. Peter Worrell who plays for the Florida Panthers has only 2 goals, 5 assists and a disturbing 256
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Approximate Word count = 1037
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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