Rome On Ice

I went with a friend this evening to see an ice hockey game: the Binghamton Senators (farm team for the Ottawa Senators) versus the Philadelphia Phantoms (farm team for the Philadelphia Flyers). In the first five minutes of the second period, something strange happened on the ice.

I heard a whistle blow, stopping play. Two players, one from each team, skated to a point on the ice where they were distant from all the other players. They faced each other, about eight feet apart, and threw their helmets and gloves on the ice behind them. The crowd roared and rose to its feet.

Now, I don't know about the gloves. I suppose if you want to play ice hockey without gloves, the officials might allow you to do so. Sure, it would be stupid, what with all the sticks and hard rubber and ice flying everywhere. But maybe they'd let you play without gloves. I know for certain, however, that they wouldn't let you play without helmets. Helmets are just a standard safety thing in sports today, for good reason. They're an absolute necessity. I know the officials won't let hockey players play without helmets. Thus: when the helmets come off, there's a clear violation of the rules going on. At this point, the officials' job--if they are like officials in any other sport--is to step in and set these guys back on the path to righteous hockey.

They didn't. Not only did they fail to grab the guys and instruct them to put their helmets back on and play the game they had come to play, but they circled around these two players who now had bare fists in the air, ready to box each other. No lie! It was like a schoolyard fight, but with the teachers keeping the kids away to see which fourth grader is going to beat the snot out of the other.

This isn't ice hockey. This is gladiatorial combat. You might as well give one a net and trident and the other a spear.

I think most sources probably state that the goal of ice hockey is to put the puck in the net. However, for this brief period of about 45 seconds, the sanctioned goal of the game was to see how much damage these two guys were going to do to each others' faces. Hm. Strange. My ticket read, "Veterans' Stadium," not "Colosseum."

Weird thing is, I think the whole crowd enjoyed this part of the game more than the goals and the power plays. What's even weirder, I think the refs were prepared for this incident. I think they have rules that govern the fights. In other words, I'm pretty sure--whether it's in the "official" (no pun intended) rule books or not--there are rules that allow for and govern hockey fights. This I believe.

It was clearly orchestrated and sanctioned. I'm not sure these two guys really had a beef with one another. I know what guys on the ice (or on the field) act like when they think they've been wronged during a game. They try to wreck the other guy when the ref's not looking. They shove sticks in places where wood isn't meant to go; they jab and scrape and foul. No, this wasn't competitive rage; I think this was a side-show.

I know all the cliches about fights in hockey. I just never saw it as clearly as I did this evening. Gladiatorial combat: Rome on ice. For a willing and bloodthirsty crowd. Where's the emperor holding out his thumb?

After witnessing all this, however, I'm still left with a quandary: why did these two, whose combat was sanctioned by the officials, still have to spend five minutes in the penalty box? It looked to me like they were playing by the rules; and the refs didn't stop them.
~ emrys